News from the Department of Medical Genetics

Chloé B. Steen, leader of the Cancer Biology in Silico project group at the Department of Medical Genetics at OUS and UiO, has been awarded the Anders Jahre Medical Prize for Young Researchers 2026.
Steen has developed advanced bioinformatic tools to characterise cells in tissues. Importantly, these tools have deepened our understanding of how cellular composition can influence cancer.
The Anders Jahre Medical Prize is one of the largest prizes in biomedical research in the Nordic region. Each year, a main prize and a prize for young medical researchers are awarded. This year, the prizes will be awarded in November. Steen shares the prize for young researcher with Heidi Haikala of the University of Helsinki. 

The Norwegian Sequencing Centre (NSC) is hosting Kotryna Cebatoriute, who is UiO bachelor student at the Department of Medical Genetics. She has written a blog post (in Norwegian) under the UiO blog "Biopraksis", about behind the scenes at NSC:
Bak kulissene hos NSC – alt mellom prøver og sekvensering (mn.uio.no)

Srdjan Djurovic recieves 40 millioner NOK from the Top Researchers program (Toppforsk) hosted by The Research Council of Norway to find out if it is possible to predict Alzheimer disease at an early stage. The supported project is entitled "Multimodal metabolic markers for mechanisms and predictive trajectories of Alzheimer's disease".
This disease starts long before the symptoms appear, often several decades earlier. Djurovic and his research group will “go back in time” and analyze blood samples from people in their 40s and 50s to find hereditary metabolic markers that can warn of risk. 
Update, February 2026: The University of Oslo has published a feature article about the project (in Norwegian):
40 millioner kroner fra NFR til forskning på Alzheimers sykdom (med.uio.no)

Section for research and development has been very successful with funding from Kreftforeningen, Pink Ribbon and DNK’s own research funds this time!!

GRATULATIONS to Ina Skaara Brorson, Alvaro Köhn-Luque and Chloe Beate Steen!!!

November 4th, 2025:
Xavier Tekpli and his group are moving from Dept, of Medical Genetics to Dept. of Pathology.
Section for Research and development at Medical Genetics wish you the very best of luck with the move and with future research projects.
We look forward to further and future collaborations.