Thomas Fleischer named Researcher of the Year 2025 at Institute for Cancer Research
Thomas Fleischer, project leader at Institute for Cancer Research (ICR), Oslo University Hospital, has been awarded the Researcher of the Year 2025 prize by the ICR leadership.
The prize was presented at the Institute seminar on December 17 and includes a personal scholarship of 100,000 NOK funded by the Radium Hospital Foundation to support further research excellence.
The leadership highlighted Fleischer’s longstanding and important contributions to our understanding of how epigenetic mechanisms and transcription-factor networks drive tumor evolution and therapy response, with a particular focus on breast cancer. By integrating molecular profiling, single-cell and multi-omics analyses, computational modeling, and functional validation, Thomas Fleischer has identified key mechanisms that have the potential to guide improved precision medicine strategies in the years ahead.
A central achievement of Fleischer’s work is the development of bioinformatic methods to study enhancer methylation and transcription-factor activity. His early discovery that enhancer methylation defines breast cancer lineages was published in Nature Communication (2017), and he has since expanded this line of research through several seniorauthor publications between 2022 and 2024. Taken together, these studies demonstrate how enhancer dysregulation shapes transcriptional programs and treatment response, and they reinforce the Department of Cancer Genetics and ICR as a leading environment for functional omics research.
We congratulate Thomas Fleischer on this well-deserved recognition and look forward to the next advances his research will bring.
“I am honored to receive this recognition. Our research is driven by a desire to improve patient treatment and to understand why some patients respond to treatment while others do not. I am grateful to my team and for the exceptional collaborators and environments at ICR and OUS that make this work possible. I look forward to continuing to push the science forward together.”, says Thomas Fleischer.
Photo: Per Marius Didriken, OUS.
Thomas Fleischer holds a PhD in cancer genetics and epigenetics from the University of Oslo / Oslo University Hospital from 2014 and subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Cancer Genetics at ICR. Since 2017 he has been a researcher and project leader in the same department.
Fleischer has built a strong and sustainable research program, securing more than 30 million NOK as principal investigator or co-investigator since 2016. This support includes two major grants from the Norwegian Cancer Society and several fellowships from Helse Sør-Øst. His current work combines single-cell multiome profiling, machine-learning models, and CRISPR-based epigenetic editing to dissect and experimentally validate the role of epigenetic mechanisms in endocrine therapy resistance. This multi-disciplinary approach enables targeted perturbation of regulatory elements within resistant subclones, with the goal of identifying actionable biomarkers and strategies to overcome treatment failure. Fleischer’s work is supported by clinical collaborations within Oslo University Hospital and Akershus University Hospital as well as by participation in international consortia such as RESCUER.
“Thomas has built an independent line of research and developed his own profile in a way that impressed the Prize Committee”, says Kjetil Taskén, Head of ICR, on behalf of the institute leadership team.
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