News

Group leader Rolf I. Skotheim in the Department of Molecular Oncology has spent the last week running from Oslo to Bergen, completing the 500 km ultra race Oslo - Bergen Trail.

Oslo Bergen Trail is regarded as a highly challenging endurance event, where participants traverse a variety of forest and mountain terrains in hopes of reaching Bergen after several days. The race was organized for the first time in 2021, and has gained popularity and established itself as one of the most extreme ultra-challenges in Scandinavia.

The race is open for both individual participants and teams consisting of 2-3 participants. A total of 213 participants had signed up for the race which started in Oslo on July 3rd, and approximately 50% were able to complete the race.

The establishment of new groups in Computational Oncology and Cancer Informatics is in line with the ICR strategy to strengthen efforts in systems cancer biomedicine and integrate such competence at the departmental level. It is also in line with the Department’s long-term strategy to recruit senior scientists with complementary competencies, serving our joint research goals.

In January, the UiO:Life Science board decided to include five new teams into the SPARK Norway innovation program. This program is designed to facilitate the transformation of research ideas into tangible solutions in the health-related life sciences sector. Since its inception in 2017, it has successfully fostered the creation of several businesses and companies, all grounded in fundamental and translational life science research. Notably, the ProClass project, a key component of the prostate cancer research portfolio within the Department of Molecular Oncology, is among the projects selected to join the SPARK innovation program for 2025.

Kushtrim Kryeziu recently turned 40 years. He came to Oslo from Vienna as a EU- post doc in 2016. He joined the Lothe lab and started his work on tumor organoids  from colorectal cancer liver metastases. Today he is responsible for the preclinical functional oncology team and he has built a major “living biobank” of > 300 patient derived metastases organoids. He was last year supported by the Norwegian Cancer Society with an open call grant to pursue his research and the project was profiled this month in Amta (in Norwegian), his local newspaper after settling down in Nesodden.

Dr. Nunes was awarded the “Basic Research Prize” for his great oral presentation at the 28th Annual Meeting of the Portuguese Society of Human Genetics (SPGH), held in Porto from December 5^th to 7^th, 2024. His presentation focused on research conducted in the Lothe’s Lab, exploring prognostic subtypes of co-occurring mutations in colorectal cancer. The presentation was selected as one of four prize-winning oral communications among the works submitted to the meeting.

Dr. Casado is shared 1^st author on the paper “Immune microniches shape intestinal Treg functions” published in Nature. This work was conducted during her postdoc stay in Professor Sarah Teichmann’s lab (Wellcome Sanger Institute, Cambridge, UK), in collaboration with Professor Fiona Powrie’s lab (University of Oxford, UK).
Dr. Casado has spent several years working in Norway with gut immunology in the Jahnsen lab at Dept. of Pathology, and was recently recruited to the Lothe lab at Institute for Cancer Research to pursue her academic career and combine research interests in gut immunology with translational research on colorectal cancer.

The Computational Oncology project group headed by Assoc. professor Anita Sveen was awarded excellent article prize from OUS for their work on intra-tumor heterogeneity in colorectal cancer. 

Read more in news article from www.ous-research.no:
Oslo University Hospital has awarded 6 excellent articles for the first half-year of 2024

At a two days meeting in Porto about “Precision cancer medicine and emerging opportunities” the former director of the Norwegian Radium hospital, Jan Vincents Johannessen, received the distinction Ordem de Sant´lago da Espada from the President of Portugal. The meeting celebrated the long term collaboration in diagnostics and research, which was initiated by the young pathologists J.V. Johannessen and Manuel Sobrinho-Simoes.
The scientific program was organized by Professors Ragnhild A Lothe, Leonor David and Manuel R Teixeira from these institutions, respectively.

The European Haematology Association and the Society for Functional Precision Medicine held their first joint meeting on Precision Medicine in Copenhagen September 25th – 27th. Kushtrim Kryeziu was invited speaker to session 1 on precision medicine trials where he presented his work on patient-derived organoids from liver metastases, discussing tumor heterogeneity and the design of the EVIDENT trial.

In this session, the NCI-MATCH and EXALT trials were also presented. The presenters of the three trials were then invited to participate in a panel debate, and Kryeziu presented pros and cons of the EVIDENT trial.

The Porto Municipal Medals ceremony for 2024 was held on July 9^th, recognising several individuals and institutions for their distinguished merits and civic achievements. Among the recipients of the Medal of Merit - Gold grade, was Professor Ragnhild A. Lothe from the Norwegian Radiumhospital - Institute for Cancer Research. Professor Lothe has played pivotal role in over 30 years of collaboration with scientists and clinicians at medical institutions in Porto, including IPATIMUP, the Portuguese Oncology Institute, and the University of Porto. This collaboration has resulted in numerous joint scientific papers, PhD degrees, innovation projects, and exchanges of scientific and technological expertise.

The Mayor, Rui Moreira, and the President of the Minicipal Assembly, Sebestião de Azevedo, presented the medal in the presence of the municipal executive council.