Department head: Professor Ragnhild A. Lothe
Deputy department head: Professor Rolf I. Skotheim
Laboratory manager: Professor Guro E. Lind
Department administrative consultants: Mona Hagen and Linda Uv Mjøen

Research groups:

Genetics	Genome Biology	Epigenetics

Project groups in the Lothe lab:

Cell signalling	Computational Oncology

Project group in the Lind lab:

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.

About:

Our main research programs are devoted to colorectal cancer and prostate cancer (Link), and we have a longstanding project portfolio also on other solid tumor types. Our expertise in biomedical research spans several disciplines from cell biology to translational research, including also active clinical research collaborations, and we have a broad range of advanced technologies established in-lab (Link). The department scientists are inventors of several biomedical patents and active innovation projects.

Lothe lab – genetics, genomics, cell signaling, colorectal cancer, MPNST, tumor heterogeneity, pharmacogenomics, biomarkers

Skotheim lab – genome biology, transcript variation, tumor heterogeneity, prostate cancer, testicular cancer, bioinformatics

Lind lab – epigenetics, genetics, GI-cancers, bladder cancer, early detection, monitoring

Affiliations

All three 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, 59 MSc/PhD degrees have successfully been defended.

The research groups are partners of the K. G. Jebsen Colorectal Cancer Research Centre (led by Prof. Lothe), the OUH priority area for colorectal cancer, the Norwegian Cancer Genomics Consortium, the European network for study on Cholangiocarcinoma, and the Global Testicular Cancer Consortium.

The K.G. Jebsen Colorectal Cancer Research Centre.

Latest News

Dr. Peter Wold Eide, post doc in the Lothe lab received the "Young researcher award" for his scientific accomplishments during the 2019 Onkologisk forum held in Tromsø November 21st-22nd where he presented a lecture entitled "Fra generiske kreftmodeller til klinisk medikamentscreening”.

Professor Guro Elisabeth Lind, head of the Epigentics research group at the Department of Molecular Oncology, has been elected as new leader in "Forskerforbundet" - The Norwegian Association of Researchers, taking over January 1st 2019.

Lind is a former head of "Akademiet for yngre forskere" (The Young Academy of Norway) and has also been a local representative for Forskerforbundet. She will be the first female leader since the 80's, and replaces Petter Aaslestad, who has been in charge of the Research Association for the last six years (two periods).

"I was very much in doubt, first and foremost because I am an active researcher with a research group and exciting projects. But I am also actively engaged in research policy and could not say no to this exciting challenge", Lind says to Khrono.

Researchers Anita Sveen and Ragnhild A. Lothe at the Department of Molecular Oncology describe in collaboration with gastrointestinal oncologist Scott Kopetz at MD Anderson Cancer Centre (US) the complexity of biomarker-driven precision oncology in colorectal cancer.

Three scientists received awards for their outstanding research at a ceremony taking place at Oslo University Hospital August 23rd. 

The major prize - the "Excellent Researcher Award" - went to Ole A. Andreassen. Mette Kalager and Anita Sveen both received the "Early Career Award".

The vast majority of primary prostate cancers are multifocal. The individual tumors within the prostate gland are known to have different aggressiveness and develop independently of one another, but little has been known about their genetic relationship.

Marthe Løvf and colleagues have performed the first large in-depth genomic heterogeneity study of primary prostate cancer and the results were published in the recognized journal European Urology earlier this month. The researchers performed exome sequencing of 89 tumor foci from 41 patients and demonstrated convincingly that the different foci within the same patient only exceptionally have any somatic gene mutations in common.

Postdoctor Andreas M. Hoff in the Skotheim group at the Department of Molecular Oncology spent a year of his postdoc in the lab of Matthew Meyerson at the Broad Institute and Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, USA. As shared first-author, he publishes together with his colleagues at the Meyerson lab in the prestigous journal Cell (impact factor 30).

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 second half-year of 2018 on June 7th in the large auditorium at Ullevål sykehus. Each group received NOK 50.000 for use in further research. The prize winners gave short presentations.

The six selected articles are of especially high quality, and they present important finding on both-short and long-term scales. The works reflect the good quality and the interdisciplinarity that characterises several research environments at Oslo University Hospital. The research is a fundamental condition for the institution to maintain and strenghten the quality in the patient treatment.

The Epigenetics Group at the Department of Molecular Oncology, headed by Guro E. Lind, has developed a robust internal control for DNA methylation analyses by droplet digital PCR (ddPCR). The findings have recently been published in the journal Clinical Epigenetics. First author is Heidi Dietrichson Pharo.

Research from the Department of Molecular Oncology has recently been profiled in three popular science articles.

In an interview in Apollon, Rolf Skotheim discusses why some healthy cells turn into cancer cells.

Bjarne Johannessen and Kaja C. G. Berg have written about colorectal cancer cell lines in the magazine BestPractice. BestPractice is a Norwegian medical journal which focuses on oncology and hematology.

In the same journal, Anita Sveen has written about tumor heterogeneity in metastatic colorectal cancer.