Research at Oslo University Hospital

Earlier this year, Precision Immunotherapy Alliance (PRIMA) PI and co-director professor Johanna Olweus received a large Cancer Grand Challenges grant funded by Cancer Research UK and NIH together with a global team “MATCHMAKERS”. Within this team is the Nobel prize winner in chemistry 2024 David Baker who got the prize for his work on computational protein design. Professor Jan Terje Andersen is another PI within PRIMA that has followed Baker’s work closely over the years and he is currently collaborating with one of Baker’s many spin-out companies.

28 major projects now receive money for new and updated laboratories, equipment, databases and other research infrastructure. In total, the Norwegian Research Council will distribute NOK 1.3 billion. 

"We are excited to announce that the project “ATMP Norway – A National Multimodal Infrastructure for ATMP” has been awarded an infrastructure grant from the Research Council (74 MNOK)", says Anna Pasetto, Director of the Center for Advanced Cell Therapy (ACT) at the Section for Cell Therapy, Division for Cancer Treatment, Oslo University Hospital.

Hepatitis E virus (HEV) infection is prevalent around the world, especially affecting low-income countries in Asia and Africa. High morbidity and mortality have been reported in pregnant women and their children. The only licensed vaccine against HEV, the recombinant HEV239, has been used in a large RCT in Bangladesh. The results from the clinical trial were published in Lancet recently. Senior author is Susanne G. Dudman, head of the The Clinical Virology Research Group group at the Department of Microbiology.

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.

A paper entitled "Pan-cancer profiling of tumor-infiltrating natural killer cells through transcriptional reference mapping" was published in the highly ranked journal Nature Immunology on July 2. This work will be an important resource when designing new NK cell therapies.
The authors have been analyzing transcriptional data from 427 patients and 39 datasets, including 7 solid tumor types (lung, brain, skin, pancreas, prostate, breast, sarcoma). They could identify 6 different functional states of tumor-infiltrating NK cells, and the state of the NK cells correlate with survival for cancer patients. 

Tore Skotland and Kirsten Sandvig, Department of Molecular Cell Biology, Institute for Cancer Research, have together with four international experts on mass spectroscopy (MS) analyses of lipids, published a short comment (2 pages with a supplementary of 2 pages) in Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology.

The article is entitled “Pitfalls in lipid mass spectroscopy of mammalian samples – a brief guide for biologists”. 

A team from the Wireless Sensor Network Research Group at The Intervention Center, led by Prof. Ilangko Balasingham, won the Best Paper Award at the 2024 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC).
The 6-page paper, entitled "Ultrasound-enabled SIMO Channel for Targeted Brain Cancer Chemotherapy", presents a novel scheme for effectively delivering drugs across the blood-brain barrier to treat glioblastoma. It was selected from 2,340 submissions and was among only 13 to receive this prestigious recognition. 

A simple blood test shows whether stomach problems in children and teenagers are likely to be inflammatory bowel disease, as shown in the study results published in the highly-ranked journal Nature Communications.
More and more children in Norway are struggling with stomach and intestinal problems. The symptoms are often not very specific - which makes it difficult to set the correct diagnosis quickly. Norwegian and Swedish researchers are now developing a blood test that measures two fatty substances in the blood to distinguish those children where there is a high probability that the problems are due to an inflammatory bowel disease.

Marte Lie Høivik, professor at the University of Oslo and consultant at Oslo University Hospital, is shared senior author on the new study, which included children from the IBSEN III study. The study has received wide media attention, and has been covered by several major Norwegian news outlets.

Three Oslo University Hospital scientists received prestigous awards for their outstanding research on Friday June 14th.
The major prize - the "Excellent Researcher Award" - went to Kjetil Taskén.
Chloé Beate Steen and Andreas Kleppe both received the "Early Career Award".
The prize money - 400.000 and 200.000 NOK respectively - is earmarked for research activities.

The awards are distributed anually in order to honour excellent scientific work. The awarding process is organized by the hospital's research committee, while an external Scientific Advisory Board has evaluated the candidates.