Research at Oslo University Hospital

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.

Highly multiplexed analysis of cell suspensions or tissue sections is now available at the Institute of Cancer Research. The Flow Cytometry Core facility has recently installed a 30-parameter fluorescence flow cytometer (FACSSymphony A5) and a 135-channel mass cytometer (Helios) with a state-of-the-art tissue imager (Hyperion). The possibility of interrogating more than 20 fluorescence-markers or more than 50 metal-markers simultaneously in millions of individual cells can unveil new cell types, functions and biomarkers for all research areas. The spatial context of tissue microenvironments across complex cellular phenotypes is empowered by the imaging capability of up to 37 protein, RNA and/or DNA markers simultaneously with 1 µm resolution. You can bring archival FFPE tissue and correlate the mass cytometry imaging with all the other data collected for those patients.