News

September 2025

The 8th Nordic Autophagy Society (NAS) Conference was held in Sånga-Säby, Sweden (near Stockholm) September 17th - 19th 2025.

Nikolai, Elena, and Ine attendend. Nikolai chaired the first session, featuring Keynote Speaker Jörn Dengjel (Fribourg, Switzerland). The other Keynote Speakers were Richard Youle (NIH, USA), Anu Kauppinen (Kuopio, Finland) and Katja Simon (Berlin, Germany). Elena and Ine presented posters, which both received a lot of interest. Elena was awarded a best poster prize at the closing ceremony!

The scientific quality and atmosphere at the Conference was extraordinary, and everyone brought back a lot of inspiration and new ideas!

May 2025

Natalie is a shared first author on an original research paper that was recently published in Cancer Discovery! The paper dissects The Germline and Somatic Origins of Prostate Cancer Heterogeneity, and stems from Natalie's previous work in the labs of Christopher M Hovens (Australia) and Paul C Boutros (Canada).

Warm congratulations to Natalie!

April 2025

Great news for the group: Nikolai and Natalie were recently awarded grants from the Legacy of Astri og Birger Torsteds for the fight on cancer, with NOK 120 00 and 100 000, respectively. Additionally, Nikolai was awarded NOK 50 000 from the Nansen Foundation and associated funds. These funds will support projects related to the role of autophagy in the prostate tumor environment as well as in treatment resistance.

January 2025

Warm welcome to the group to Ine Mello, new IBV Master student from January 2025!

Ine will work on a project related to understanding the role of autophagy in the interation between cells of the prostate cancer tumor microenvironment.

Supervisors: Nikolai and Natalie (main supervisors) and Cinzia Progida (internal IBV).

September 10^th 2024

Elena succesfully defended her MSc thesis on September 10^th 2024, with the highest grade possible (A).

Congratulations, very well deserved!!

June 11^th 2024:

Great news for Natalie, who was awarded NOK 35 000 from the Anders Jahre foundation!

The project relates to understanding the role of autophagy in prostate cancer therapeutics.

This study builds perfectly on Natalies extensive previous experience in research on prostate cancer treatment resistance, and highly promising preliminary data that she has obtained in the "Autophagy in Cancer" Project Group.

Congratulations to Natalie for her first independent grant!

June 7^th 2024:

Natalie and Nikolai have published a comprehensive, critical review on the role of autophagy in prostate carcinogenesis and prostate cancer therapeutics.

The paper was published on June 7^th 2024 in the journal Frontiers in Pharmacology.

Natalie and Nikolai are both corresponding authors.

The review discusses the role of autophagy in prostate carcinogenesis and in the response of prostatate cancer cells to therapies that are used to treat prostate cancer patients in the clinic today, i.e. androgen-deprivation therapy, radiation, chemotherapeutics, and targeteted therapy.

The paper is open access: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/pharmacology/articles/10.3389/fphar.2024.1419806/full

December 21^st 2023:

Nikolai was awarded 9 million NOK in Open project support in The South-Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority (Helse Sør-Øst) 2023 general call.

This was the maximum grant sum obtainable.

The project aims to understand the function of autophagy during tumor microenvironment stress in prostate cancer.

The anticipated start date for the project is July 1^st 2024.

Christina and Nikolai are co-authors on a paper published in the November 2023 issue of the journal "Autophagy" (Impact Factor 13.391).

The paper is resulting from a collaboration with the group of Guillermo Mariño (Oviedo, Spain).

The 6th Nordic Autophagy Society (NAS) Conference was held in Kuopio, Finland May 31st - June 2nd 2023.

Nikolai, Christina, Elena, Natalie and Julia attendend. All presented posters. Natalie gave a selected short talk on "The Role of Mammalian Atg8 Proteins In PINK/Parkin-Independent Mitophagy". Her talk attracted a lot of attention. Nikolai chaired the first session, featuring Keynote Speaker Tassula Proikas-Cezanne (Tübingen, Germany). The other Keynote Speakers were Christian Behrends (Münich, Germany), Daniel Hofius (Uppsala, Sweden) and Lisa Frankel (Copenhagen, Denmark).

The Conference was very inspiring and enjoyable for everyone!

Photos from the two poster sessions (photos taken by Nikolai Engedal)

Kuopio (photos taken by Nikolai Engedal)

Helsinki: before the Conference we had a fun one-day lab retreat in Helsinki!

Nikolai was one of four speakers at the 3rd Women in Autophagy (WIA) workshop, which was held on October 6th, 2022. On the workshop theme “Inducers and inhibitors of autophagy“, Nikolai gave a 45 minute presentation on ”Exploring autophagic inducers and inhibitors with cargo-based autophagy assays”.

The talks were followed by a 1h panel discussion and Q&A with the four speakers David Rubinsztein, Carmine Settembre, Mericka McCabe and Nikolai. The event attracted around 150-200 participants.

Welcome to Elena Sofie Cao, new IBV Master student in the group from Autumn 2022.

Elena will work on a project related to understand the role of autophagy in the interation between cells of the prostate cancer tumor microenvironment.

Supervisors: Natalie Jayne Kurganovs (main), Nikolai Engedal (co-supervisor) and Cinzia Progida (internal IBV).

Great trip to the 5^th Nordic Autophagy Society (NAS) Conference Conference on “Autophagy mechanisms, physiology and beyond” in Copenhagen, Denmark! The Conference was held September 14^th-16^th 2022. Nikolai, Natalie, Julia, Christina and Juncal participated.

Nikolai gave a Keynote Lecture on “Elucidating the role of mammalian ATG8 proteins in autophagy by the use of cargo-based assays”. The other Keynote Speakers were Ivan Dikic, Wade Harper, and Claudine Kraft.

Natalie and Julia presented a poster on “Optimising the measurement of autophagic flux in primary, nonmalignant human epithelial prostate cells”

Christina presented a poster on “An investigation of the potential role of autophagy and autophagy-related proteins in melanoma development”

Juncal presented a poster on “The effects of anti-cancer drug-nanomaterials on autophagy in malignant and non-malignant cells”

Everyone received very useful feedback, enjoyed the interactions, and learned a lot from the Conference!

Christina succesfully defended her MSc thesis on June 22nd 2022, with the highest grade possible (A).

Hard work and effort paid off!

Our paper on Keima-based assays and mitophagy induction was published January 1^st 2022 in the Autophagy in Cancer Special Issue of Methods in Molecular Medicine (Springer Nature) !

Authors include Nikolai, Sarvini, Thea and Julia from the group, and collaborators at our Institute (Tonje, Alfonso, Maria) and from Denmark (Carsten J. Beese and Lisa Frankel).

Link to the paper: https://link.springer.com/protocol/10.1007/978-1-0716-2071-7_7

Inspiring 4^th Nordic Autophagy Conference in Tromsø November 10^th-12^th 2021 (110 participants), with attendance by Natalie, Christina, Julia, Sarvini and Nikolai. Masks had to be worn, but the value of a physical conference can not be underestimated! It was a great experience for all.

Top left: Christina and Natalie presenting their poster! Lot of interest.

Top right: Julia and Sarvini received a lot of attention on their poster!

Bottom: Nikolai - lead organizer of the Conference and NAS chair

Click here for the Conference Report with pictures

Great Seminar Day at the Norwegian Cancer Society Science Center (downwtown Oslo) November 5^th 2021 with scientific talks from invited speakers Steve Bova, Hege Russnes, Jorrit Enserrink, Kristin Taskén and Leiv Rønneberg, as well as from Alfonso Urbanucci, Nikolai Engedal and Sigve Nakken.

The Seminar also comprised important talks from cancer patient organizations highlighted cancer patient persepectives. The latter included talks from amongst others Roger Larsen (Progether) and Per Hansen-Just (PROFO - Prostatakreftforeningen). We also had a nice presentation from the Norwegian Cancer Society by Rønnaug Kolve, Torunn E. Tjelle, Ingvill Moe and Guro Hundvebakk.

A special thanks to Julia for help in organizing and taking care of all the practical arrangements!

A warm welcome to Natalie, who arrived in August 2021 to start working on the Autophagy in Prostate Cancer project!

Natalie has a strong background in prostate cancer research, both from wet lab and bioinformatics work - with a PhD in Christopher Hovens lan at The University of Melbourne (Australia) and a Postdoc in the labs of Thomas Kislinger at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and Paul Boutros at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (both in Toronto, Canada).

Sarvini and Thea succesfully passed their MSc examinations on June 15th and 18th 2021.

Both with excellent grades. Congratulations!!

The two graduated MSc from the well-deserved celebration on June 18th 2021

Nikolai Engedal was recently awarded 9 million NOK in Open project support from The South-Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority (Helse Sør-Øst) 2020 call. The project aims to unravel the role of autophagy in prostate cancer formation and progression, to discover prognostic autophagy-related gene signatures and markers, and to identify autophagy-modulating drugs that can reduce cancer cell aggressiveness. Engedal is now starting up a project group in Eivind Hovig’s group at the Department of Tumor Biology.

The application “AUTOprost – the role of autophagy in prostate cancer formation and progression” to the Open Call of The South-Eastern Norway Regional Health Authority was recently funded with NOK 9 million (principal investigator: Nikolai Engedal). 

(posted January 29^th 2021)

- A new and updated edition of the “Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy” (4th edition) is now in press in the journal Autophagy. A must read for everyone interested in autophagy! 

(posted January 29^th 2021)