Research at Oslo University Hospital

Professor Johanna Olweus - head of the Experimental Immunotherapy Group at the Department of Cancer Immunology - was awarded the Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for her project on immunotherapy “OUTSOURCE: Outsourcing cancer immunity to healthy donors”.

In a study published December 3rd in Nature Communications, Xavier Tekpli in Vessela Kristensen’s group and their colleagues from the EMIT study report an immune-related breast cancer subtype which identifies patients with poor prognosis and in need of new treatment strategies.

B cell receptor ligation induces display of V-region peptides on MHC class II molecules to T cells." published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) this week, first author Peter Huszthy and researchers from Bjarne Bogen's group at the Department of Immunology demonstrate the importance of B cell receptor (BCR) ligation by antigen for Idiotype-driven T cell-B cell collaboration. Idiotype-driven T cell-B cell collaboration, if made chronic, may lead to the development of systemic autoimmune disease and B cell lymphomas.

In order to stimulate excellent research and draw attention to the hospital's research activity, Oslo University Hospital reward outstanding publications every half-year.

Six research groups were awarded for their excellent papers published during the first half-year of 2019 on November 22nd. Each group received NOK 50.000 for use in further research. The prize winners then gave short presentations of their important findings.

In a recent publication in the journal Nature Immunology, Espen Melum at the Norwegian PSC research center and a large international team of collaborators provide evidence that a natural occurring lipid can dramatically affect the function of NKT-cells.

Karl Johan Malmberg from the Department of Cancer Immunology at Institute for Cancer Research has received Dr. Ragnar Mørk's Prize 2019 for his excellent research on natural killer (NK) cells. Malmberg's research has improved our understanding of how NK cells are activated, which opens new possibilities for using NK cells in cancer immunotherapy. Malmberg is currently exploring this concept in ongoing clinical trials.

Vessela Kristensen is appointed Head of Research at the Section for Research and Development at the Department of Medical Genetics. 
During her 23 years at the Institute for Cancer research (1996-2019), she has lead multiple projects and attracted external funding for more than 40 mill. NOK leading 9 PhD students as a main supervisor. In the last 13 years (20006 - 2019) she has been professor I at Institute for clinical medicine, Campus Ahus, where she supervised additional 6 PhD students and generated external funding for 21 million NOK. "Now it is time for something new" says Vessela Kristensen.