Welcome to Kjetil Taskén's research group: Cell Signalling and Immune Regulation

Kjetil TaskénGroup leader/ Institute leader
Kjetil Taskén
Group leader/ Institute leader

The Taskén group aims to understand tumor immune evasion mechanisms, and how we can interfere to boost anti-tumor immunity. We want to define future precision immune oncology strategies.

We proceed with cancer drug sensitivity screening (CDSS) to explore individual drug responsiveness and resistance patterns in patient cancer cells. We aim to develop models to assist individualised clinical decisions in precision cancer medicine (PCM) in oncology and haematology.

We aim to understand intracellular signalling networks, the anchoring and localization of signaling complexes through scaffold proteins, how these signalling networks mediate physiological and pathophysiological processes and can be perturbed using drug-like small molecules.

Current projects:

  • Tumor immune evasion mechanisms, T cell function in cancer and immune-related diseases
  • Identification of regulatory T cell targets that can be perturbed to reverse tumor immune suppression
  • CDSS in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and multiple myeloma, understanding drug synergies and predicting effective drug combinations in individual patients
  • Functional PCM approaches in solid tumors, hereunder CDSS on pancreatic cancer, breast cancer and ovarian cancer
  • IMPRESS-Norway national PCM clinical implementation trial (trial management)
  • Acetyl salicylic acid clinical intervention study in metastatic colorectal cancer (ASAC)

The group is part of the K.G. Jebsen Centre for B cell malignancies.

 
A national precision cancer medicine implementation initiative for Norway:
Here is a Share Link to the Nature Medicine Correspondence paper by Taskén et al on development of a national precision cancer medicine implementation initiative for Norway.
 
Functional precision cancer medicine: drug sensitivity screening enabled by cell culture models:
Åsmund Flobak, Sigrid S. Skånland, Eivind Hovig, Kjetil Taskén, Hege G. Russnes
Functional precision cancer medicine: drug sensitivity screening enabled by cell culture models
Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, 2022, ISSN 0165-6147, DOI: 10.1016/j.tips.2022.08.009
Share Link
 
Systems approach reveals distinct and shared signaling networks for the four PGE2 receptors in T cells:
Anna M. Lone, Piero Giansanti, Marthe Jøntvedt Jørgensen, Enio Gjerga, Aurelien Dugourd, Arjen Scholten, Julio Saez-Rodriguez, Albert J. R. Heck, Kjetil Taskén
Systems approach reveals distinct and shared signaling networks of the four PGE2 receptors in T cells
Science Signaling, Oct 5, 2021, vol 14, issue 703, DOI: 10.1126/scisignal.abc8579

Pictures