Research at Oslo University Hospital

A European consortium coordinated by Sigrid S. Skånland, project group leader at the Department of Cancer Immunology, has been awarded an EP PerMed grant co-funded by the European Commission for their project “Chronic lymphocytic leukemia: Improving survival and quality of life (CLL-OUTCOME)”.

The vision of the European Partnership for Personalised Medicine is to “improve health outcomes within sustainable healthcare systems through research, development, innovation and implementation of personalised medicine approaches for the benefit of patients, citizens, and society”.

At a two days meeting in Porto about “Precision cancer medicine and emerging opportunities” the former director of the Norwegian Radium hospital, Jan Vincents Johannessen, received the distinction Ordem de Sant´lago da Espada from the President of Portugal. The meeting celebrated the long term collaboration in diagnostics and research, which was initiated by the young pathologists J.V. Johannessen and Manuel Sobrinho-Simoes.
The scientific program was organized by Professors Ragnhild A Lothe, Leonor David and Manuel R Teixeira from these institutions, respectively.

Around one-fourth of all eucaryotic proteins, including cell surface receptors, are transmembrane proteins transported to their final destination along the lipid bilayer of the cellular endomembrane system. The protein sorting mechanisms that guide this transport and the pathways taken by transmembrane proteins are still not clearly defined. Now, researcher Serhiy Pankiv and co-workers in Anne Simonsen’s group identified the family of large BEACH domain-containing proteins (BDCPs) as sorting adaptors that, together with clathrin coat proteins, facilitate transport of transmembrane cargo to their destination.

In a collaborative effort, an international team of researchers, including Eivind Hovig and Mev Dominguez-Valentin from the Department of Tumor Biology at the Institute for Cancer Research, has identified six new cancer susceptibility genes using gene-based burden tests of rare germline variants. This significant discovery enhances the understanding of genetic predispositions to cancer. The results have recently been published in the prestigious journal Nature Genetics.

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.