Primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) is a progressive chronic liver disease associated with increased risk of cholangiocarcinoma; a highly deadly malignancy that arises in the bile ducts. Due to nonspecific presenting features and overlapping findings in malignant and benign disease progression in PSC, the diagnostic accuracy for cholangiocarcinoma in PSC is low. Consequently, cholangiocarcinoma is commonly detected at advanced stage where most patients have a poor chance of surviving, making cholangiocarcinoma the most common cause of death among patients with PSC.

Project group leaders Anita Sveen and Bjarne Johannessen at Department of Molecular Oncology at the Institute for Cancer Research are 1^st and 2^nd authors of a major work presenting the ”expressed mutation dose” as a determinant of the functional consequences of mutations in colorectal cancer.

The article - entitled "The expressed mutational landscape of microsatellite stable colorectal cancers" is published in the journal Genome Medicine.

The multidisciplinary team of the K.G.Jebsen Colorectal Cancer Research Centre publishes a novel gene expression-based classification of metastatic colorectal cancer.
PhD student S. Hossein Moosavi in Anita Sveen’s project group at the Dept. of Molecular Oncology at the Institute for Cancer Research is 1st author of this paper published in Genome Medicine.
This is the first large study of multi-metastatic gene expression profiling of colorectal cancer liver metastases, and the new metastasis-oriented subtyping framework showed prognostic relevance in the context of tumor heterogeneity. 

Three Oslo University Hospital scientists received prestigous awards for their outstanding research on August 27th. The major prize - the "Excellent Researcher Award" - went to Ragnhild A. Lothe. Lasse Pihlstrøm and Marina Vietri both received the "Early Career Award".
The prize money - 300.000 and 150.000 NOK respectively - is earmarked for research activities.

The ceremony was streamed and is available via YouTube.

Anita Sveen (39) – senior researcher and project group leader at Institute for Cancer Research – was on December 16th awarded the prize Researcher-of-the-Year from the leadership at ICR for her outstanding scientific contributions. The award of 100 000 NOK is financed by the Radium Hospital Foundation (Radiumhospitalets legater) and is a personal scholarship for stimulating further excellence in research. 

In June, Tuva Høst Brunsell (MD) digitally defended her PhD “ Heterogeneity of prognostic biomarkers in colorectal liver metastases”, Institute for Clinical Medicine, University of Oslo. The thesis includes three papers (Brunsell et al., Clin Colorectal Cancer 2020; Brunsell et al., Eur J Surg Oncol 2019; Berg*, Brunsell* et al., submitted).

On September the 4th, Christer Anker Andreassen, digitally defended his MSc, Institute of Biosciences, University of Oslo. “The functional and clinical impact of the E3 Ubiquitin ligase NEDD4 in colorectal cancer and its role in regulating PTEN and P53”.

On September the 11th, Mikael Ravndal, defended his MSc, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo. "Algorithms for exploring heterogeneity in prostate cancer patients from RNA-seq data".

By examining vulnerabilities in colorectal cancer, Jørgen Smeby, Kushtrim Kryeziu, and colleagues demonstrated the efficacy of PARP inhibitors for a subgroup of colorectal cancer cell lines in a recent paper in EBioMedicine (The Lancet’s open access).

The cancer patient’s own drug sensitivity model: researchers from the Lothe lab and collaborators recently published a paper in Clinical Cancer Research describing ex vivo patient-derived organoids from colorectal liver metastases in a heterogeneity context. 

Drs. Jarle Bruun, Kushtrim Kryeziu and Peter W. Eide (photo) were shared 1st authors , and have established the PDO lineages and drug screen analyses.

The first digital PhD defence at the Institute for Cancer Research was held on the 20th of April 2020.

Dr. Jørgen Smeby defended his thesis "Molecular subtype-dependent impact of driver mutations in colorectal cancer" submitted to the Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo.

The work was performed in the Lothe lab at the Institute for Cancer Research. 

As we enter a new year, we can look back on our scientific achievements in 2019. Dept Mol Oncol is one of six research departments at the Institute for Cancer Research, and we account for about 10% of the total staff (full-time equivalent). Harvesting from a positive working environment and active collaborations among our three research groups, we can document an upward trajectory in the volume, citation numbers, and impact of our research publications.