Research at Oslo University Hospital

The European doctoral network Mac4Me (Macrophage Targets for Metastatic Treatment) is a 48-month project that addresses both technical and social challenges in cancer metastasis, focusing on three tumour types that show poor response to current immunotherapies: neuroblastoma, breast, and prostate cancer. Mac4Me is a Horizon Europe MSCA (Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions) Doctoral Network. The network will train 18 Doctoral Candidates to study the tumour microenvironment at metastatic sites. The project is led by a consortium of 14 partners, that includes Oslo University Hospital.
Tero Aittokallio, leader of the Computational Systems Medicine research group at the Institute for Cancer Research, is one of the supervisors, who were selected for their exceptional academic qualifications. The doctoral researcher at OUS will apply multi-modal AI algorithms to define new targets for improved immunotherapy.

Drug resistance remains a major challenge in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). A study led by Martina Seiffert (German Cancer Research Center) in collaboration with Sigrid S. Skånland (Institute for Cancer Research) suggests that alterations in the proteasome activity drive resistance to the BTK inhibitor ibrutinib, and that proteasome inhibitors are effective in ibrutinib resistant or refractory CLL.

Treatment with ibrutinib can induce remissions for several years, yet development of drug resistance represents a major challenge. Mutations in BTK and the downstream protein PLCG2 are commonly detected in resistant disease, while mechanisms of resistance that are not explained by these mutations have not yet been understood. 

In the largest study conducted to date on the genetics of bipolar disorder, researchers have identified 36 genes linked to the condition. This marks a significant step toward understanding the genetic factors behind bipolar disorder, which could lead to improved diagnosis and treatment in the future.
Together with a large international research consortium, Kevin O’Connell and Ole Andreassen have conducted the most extensive study on bipolar disorder and genetics to date, involving over 2.9 million people. The findings are published in the prestigious journal Nature, with O'Connell and Andreassen as first and last author respectively.

Oslo University Hospital hereby announce research awards in the following two catagories for 2025:

• Excellent Researcher Award (one prize, 400.000 NOK)
• Early Career Award (two prizes of 200.000 NOK each)

Closing date for nominations: March 7th 2025.

The Intervention Centre and the Department of Orthopeadics recently received good news from the The Research Council of Norway; The HOLOX project was funded with 16 mill NOK. The project has a total budget of about 32 mill, where about 9 mill goes to OUS for supporting the project with research. HOLOX – Holographic, miXed reality “see-through-vision” for orthopaedic surgery, is an Innovation Project for the Industrial Sector (IPN) where the project owner (HoloCare AS) buy research support from an academic partner (OUH).

Anette Weyergang – project group leader at Institute for Cancer Research (ICR), Oslo University Hospital - is on December 11^th awarded the prize Researcher-of-the-Year from the leadership at ICR for her groundbreaking scientific contributions. The award of 100,000 NOK is financed by the Radium Hospital Foundation (Radiumhospitalets legater) and is a personal scholarship for stimulating further excellence in research. 

The leadership group highlights the important work Weyergang has done to characterize the role of Rab proteins in the intracellular transport of antibody-drug conjugates such as for example trastuzumab-derukstekan (Enhertu®). This work has been published in Nature Communication and led to the establishment of Rab Diagnostics AS. 

Dr. Casado is shared 1^st author on the paper “Immune microniches shape intestinal Treg functions” published in Nature. This work was conducted during her postdoc stay in Professor Sarah Teichmann’s lab (Wellcome Sanger Institute, Cambridge, UK), in collaboration with Professor Fiona Powrie’s lab (University of Oxford, UK).
Dr. Casado has spent several years working in Norway with gut immunology in the Jahnsen lab at Dept. of Pathology, and was recently recruited to the Lothe lab at Institute for Cancer Research to pursue her academic career and combine research interests in gut immunology with translational research on colorectal cancer.

Researcher Stian Foss from Jan Terje Andersen's research group at the Department of Immunology got the Norwegian Society forImmunology prize for the best research article published in 2024.
Foss received the prize at the 42nd Annual Meeting and General Assembly of the Norwegian Society for Immunology, Nov 29.
The article was published in March 2024 in Nature Communications and describes new Fc technology that may be broadly applicable in antibody design of new therapeutics with enhanced half-life and mucosal distribution.