Researchers Anita Sveen and Ragnhild A. Lothe at the Department of Molecular Oncology describe in collaboration with gastrointestinal oncologist Scott Kopetz at MD Anderson Cancer Centre (US) the complexity of biomarker-driven precision oncology in colorectal cancer.
Three scientists received awards for their outstanding research at a ceremony taking place at Oslo University Hospital August 23rd.
The major prize - the "Excellent Researcher Award" - went to Ole A. Andreassen. Mette Kalager and Anita Sveen both received the "Early Career Award".
In order to stimulate excellent research and draw attention to the hospital's research activity, Oslo University Hospital reward outstanding publications every half-year.
Six research groups were awarded for their excellent papers published during the second half-year of 2018 on June 7th in the large auditorium at Ullevål sykehus. Each group received NOK 50.000 for use in further research. The prize winners gave short presentations.
The six selected articles are of especially high quality, and they present important finding on both-short and long-term scales. The works reflect the good quality and the interdisciplinarity that characterises several research environments at Oslo University Hospital. The research is a fundamental condition for the institution to maintain and strenghten the quality in the patient treatment.
Professor Guro Elisabeth Lind, head of the Epigentics research group at the Department of Molecular Oncology, has been elected as new leader in "Forskerforbundet" - The Norwegian Association of Researchers, taking over January 1st 2019.
Lind is a former head of "Akademiet for yngre forskere" (The Young Academy of Norway) and has also been a local representative for Forskerforbundet. She will be the first female leader since the 80's, and replaces Petter Aaslestad, who has been in charge of the Research Association for the last six years (two periods).
"I was very much in doubt, first and foremost because I am an active researcher with a research group and exciting projects. But I am also actively engaged in research policy and could not say no to this exciting challenge", Lind says to Khrono.
The vast majority of primary prostate cancers are multifocal. The individual tumors within the prostate gland are known to have different aggressiveness and develop independently of one another, but little has been known about their genetic relationship.
Marthe Løvf and colleagues have performed the first large in-depth genomic heterogeneity study of primary prostate cancer and the results were published in the recognized journal European Urology earlier this month. The researchers performed exome sequencing of 89 tumor foci from 41 patients and demonstrated convincingly that the different foci within the same patient only exceptionally have any somatic gene mutations in common.
Postdoctor Andreas M. Hoff in the Skotheim group at the Department of Molecular Oncology spent a year of his postdoc in the lab of Matthew Meyerson at the Broad Institute and Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, USA. As shared first-author, he publishes together with his colleagues at the Meyerson lab in the prestigous journal Cell (impact factor 30).
In a recent publication in Annals of Oncology (journal impact factor 11.9) by Jørgen Smeby and colleagues in the Lothe lab at the Department of Molecular Oncology, integration of gene expression-based subtyping and microsatellite instability status led to discovery of novel subtype-specific prognostic associations of the thoroughly investigated KRAS and BRAFV600E mutations in primary colorectal cancer (CRC).
The Epigenetics Group at the Department of Molecular Oncology, headed by Guro E. Lind, has developed a robust internal control for DNA methylation analyses by droplet digital PCR (ddPCR). The findings have recently been published in the journal Clinical Epigenetics. First author is Heidi Dietrichson Pharo.
Research from the Department of Molecular Oncology has recently been profiled in three popular science articles.
In an interview in Apollon, Rolf Skotheim discusses why some healthy cells turn into cancer cells.
Bjarne Johannessen and Kaja C. G. Berg have written about colorectal cancer cell lines in the magazine BestPractice. BestPractice is a Norwegian medical journal which focuses on oncology and hematology.
In the same journal, Anita Sveen has written about tumor heterogeneity in metastatic colorectal cancer.