Department head: Professor Ragnhild A. Lothe
Deputy department head: Professor Rolf I. Skotheim
Laboratory manager: Ina Andrassy Eilertsen
Department administrative consultant: Ikram Mahnin

As a research department within the OUH Comprehensive Cancer Centre, it is our responsibility and goal to accomplish high quality and interdisciplinary biomedical research for improved precision medicine and management of cancer patients.

Research groups

Genetics	Genome Biology	Epigenetics

Project groups

Computational Oncology	Cell Signalling	Functional Precision Oncology	Cancer Informatics

About

Our main research programs are devoted to colorectal cancer and prostate cancer, and we have a longstanding project portfolio also on other solid tumor types. Our expertise in biomedical research spans several disciplines, and we have a broad range of advanced technologies established in-lab.

The group leaders are adjunct professors at the University of Oslo and are affiliated with the Institute for Clinical Medicine, the Institute for Biosciences and the Institute for Informatics. We aim to complete at least 3 academic degrees annually, and since the inauguration of the Department in 2006, 48 MSc and 41 PhD degrees have successfully been defended.

Summary annual highlights – 2023: Experimental diagnostics enters the clinic

Latest News

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.

The European Haematology Association and the Society for Functional Precision Medicine held their first joint meeting on Precision Medicine in Copenhagen September 25th – 27th. Kushtrim Kryeziu was invited speaker to session 1 on precision medicine trials where he presented his work on patient-derived organoids from liver metastases, discussing tumor heterogeneity and the design of the EVIDENT trial.

In this session, the NCI-MATCH and EXALT trials were also presented. The presenters of the three trials were then invited to participate in a panel debate, and Kryeziu presented pros and cons of the EVIDENT trial.

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.

Congratulations to Arina Surko, Ida Sophie Gjøstøl Strømsvåg and Joachim Jordal Moe, on successfully defending their Master's theses. Their projects were carried out at the Department of Molecular Oncology, and they attended the Master's programs at the Department of Biosciences or the Department of Informatics, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Oslo.

The Computational Oncology project group, led by Anita Sveen, has in collaboration with additional members of the Lothe group and clinical partners at OUH published a study on transcriptomic tumor heterogeneity of colorectal cancers.
Gene expression analysis of approximately 1,100 samples from primary tumors and liver metastases of 700 patients treated at OUH was used to define patterns of heterogeneous and uniform expression across tumor regions.

Heidi Pharo attended the NextGen Omics 2023 Conference in London the 9^th – 10^th of November and presented a poster about the bladder cancer research in the Lind lab, including a national multicenter clinical trial using the BladMetrix urine test for detecting recurrences. The poster received great attention, and was one of three posters achieving the Young Scientist Award (YSA) for best poster presentation. The three winners each received a £1000 travel grant, the Oxford Globals’ Omics PLUS Pass, a trophy and the opportunity to provide a 10 minutes oral presentation at the conference the following day.

Over the past week, two PhD candidates from the Department of Molecular Oncology successfully defended their theses at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo.

On June 2nd, M.D. Mari Bogaard presented her PhD thesis titled "On the hunt for improved biomarkers in primary prostate cancer – combining morphological features and molecular changes".

One week earlier, on May 26th, M.Sc. S. Hossein Moosavi defended his thesis on the "Clinical implications of transcriptomic and pharmacological tumor heterogeneity of metastatic colorectal cancers".

Kushtrim Kryeziu is 37 years and defended his PhD at the Medical University of Vienna in 2016. Kryeziu was recruited to the Lothe lab in 2016 via an EU financed fellowship and was included in the Scientia Fellows postdoc program at the University of Oslo. His recruitment has proven highly beneficial for the development of the current project on functional oncology in advanced solid tumors. His competence in molecular cell biology and hands-on experience with anti-cancer drug development was instrumental to the development of our pre-clinical pharmacogenomics platform. Kryeziu has recently accepted a permanent position at the Institute for Cancer Research. 

Ina A. Eilertsen and Christian Holst Bergsland defended their respective work in transcriptomics and molecular pathology of colorectal cancer, Maren Høland recently defended her work on genomics of Malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors, and Jonas Meier Strømme defended his computational analyses in solid tumors last week, 9^th Dec. Their PhD theses comprise a total of thirteen papers from our groups, including eleven first-authorships among the PhD candidates.