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 BRAF^V600E 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.

In two recent publications (Eide PW et al. Sci Rep; Sveen A*, Bruun J* et al. Clin Cancer Res), scientists in the Lothe lab., Department of Molecular Oncology, have identified novel potential treatment strategies for colorectal cancer (CRC), guided by the consensus molecular subtypes (CMS). Combining algorithm development, for translation of CMS classification to preclinical models, with drug screening of classified cell lines and patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) in collaboration with the Finnish Institute for Molecular Medicine and Vall d´Hebron Institute of Oncology, a potential to overcome chemoresistance in the poor prognostic CMS4-mesenchymal group was identified by combination therapy with 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) and HSP90 inhibitors.

Dr. Anita Sveen from Ragnhild Lothe's group at the Department of Molecular Oncology received the Young Investigator prize at Onkologisk Forum for her research accomplishments. This annual meeting for oncologists took place in Oslo on November 16-17. The award amounts to 50.000 NOK, to be spent on research.

Sveen presented her research in computational oncology, focusing on clinical relevant questions for colorectal cancer and novel results published in 6 selected papers.

The report highlights clinically relevant research and projects ongoing in the KG Jebsen Colorectal cancer research centre was selected from the Health Region South East. Specifically, Dr Jarle Bruun's paper identifying the gene Regulator of chromosome condensation 2 (RCC2) as functionally important in colorectal cancer, and furthermore that changes of RCC2 at the DNA and protein level can identify clinically distinct subgroups of patients with inferior survival. This is the first paper that reports clinical relevance of RCC2 in cancer. Bruun has already contributed to two ongoing innovation projects from the Lothe group at the Department of Molecular Oncology, Institute for Cancer Research.

Forskning og innovasjon til pasientens beste - Nasjonal rapport fra spesialisthelsetjenesten 2016