The University Board at the University of Oslo (UiO) annually awards prizes to scientific staff for outstanding efforts and results. Kjetil Taskén receives this year's innovation prize, and he is awarded the prize for his instrumental work in building up precision cancer medicine in Norway.
- We highlight UiO's very best researchers, communicators and teachers through these awards. This year's five award winners show that long-term, purposeful and hard work contributes to increased competence and knowledge which benefits us all, says rector Svein Stølen.

Åslaug Helland is awarded the prestigious prize for her excellent molecular and clinical research, particularly on lung cancer diagnosis and treatment and for her efforts to introduce precision oncology for all types of cancer in Norway. The prize, one million NOK, will be presented by HM King Harald V in a ceremony in Oslo on 2 May.
Helland has made important contributions in characterising and identifying target populations of patients and in understanding cancer resistance mechanisms across multiple tumour types. 

The European Commission approved the project Precision Cancer Medicine Repurposing System Using Pragmatic Clinical Trials, PRIME-ROSE on 24 April 2023. The project will run for five years (2023-2028) and is funded by the European Commission Horizon Europe Mission on Cancer with 6 mill EUR. The consortium consists of altogether 24 partners, including nine beneficiaries and fifteen associated partners.
The pan-European PRIME-ROSE project is led by Professor Kjetil Taskén, Head of Institute for Cancer Research at Oslo University Hospital. OUH will receive about 20 mill NOK.

The Annual Report from the Institute for Cancer Research for 2022 is now published.

Institute head Kjetil Taskén says:
“Read about the exciting research by 380 people in 25 research groups, more than 30 project groups and 6 core facilities at the ICR! Activities in the CanCell, and PRIMA (to start) CoEs, MATRIX Clinical Cancer Research Centre, the ACT and KG Jebsen Centres and two OUH strategic research areas and other activities in precision medicine and cell therapy where our researchers are involved are also covered.”

Mev Dominguez-Valentin from The Department of Tumor Biology is the first author of the article “Mortality by age, gene and gender in carriers of pathogenic mismatch repair gene variants receiving surveillance for early cancer diagnosis and treatment: A report from the Prospective Lynch Syndrome Database”, recently published in eClinicalMedicine, part of The Lancet Discovery Science. 

Åslaug Helland has been elected as a member of the prestigious Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Altogether, four new members are welcomed to the Academy’s Natural Sciences Division in 2023, and Åslaug Helland will join the Medical Sciences group. She will be formally presented with her diploma during a ceremony at the Academy of Science and Letters Annual Meeting, which will take place on Wednesday 3 May.
Commenting on her election, Åslaug Helland says: “I’m truly honored and grateful to be nominated and elected as a member of the prestigious Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. I look forward to participating in and contributing to Academy activities”.