Research at Oslo University Hospital

In order to stimulate excellent research and draw attention to the hospital's research activity, Oslo University Hospital rewards outstanding publications every half-year.

Six research groups were awarded for their excellent papers published the first half-year of 2024 during a ceremony on November 28th. Each group received NOK 50.000 earmarked for further research, and the prize winners gave short presentations of their main findings.

A team of scientists has made a groundbreaking discovery that could explain why certain prostate cancer therapies are less effective than expected. With 5,000 Norwegian men diagnosed with the disease annually, resulting in roughly 1,000 deaths every year, a major clinical objective is to prevent the spread of cancer and recurrence. 

The study was published in Nature Communications November 16th. Alfonso Urbanucci from the Institute of Cancer Research is shared senior author.

A European consortium coordinated by Sigrid S. Skånland, project group leader at the Department of Cancer Immunology, has been awarded an EP PerMed grant co-funded by the European Commission for their project “Chronic lymphocytic leukemia: Improving survival and quality of life (CLL-OUTCOME)”.

The vision of the European Partnership for Personalised Medicine is to “improve health outcomes within sustainable healthcare systems through research, development, innovation and implementation of personalised medicine approaches for the benefit of patients, citizens, and society”.

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.

With this meeting place for academia and industry the UiO Growth House wants to inspire, give self-confidence and knowledge about the innovation process, help researchers and students to build networks and facilitate collaboration between academia and industry to put more research to use for the benefit of patients and society.

• Inspirational talk: Jonas Hallén, PhD, Chief Medical Officer, Co-Founder, Calluna Pharma
• Role model talk: TBA
• Matchmaking between researchers and students and representatives from companies: Halden Pharma, Pharmaq, Sero, UiO iHub, Novartis, UiO Momentum internship and Calluna Pharma

Around one-fourth of all eucaryotic proteins, including cell surface receptors, are transmembrane proteins transported to their final destination along the lipid bilayer of the cellular endomembrane system. The protein sorting mechanisms that guide this transport and the pathways taken by transmembrane proteins are still not clearly defined. Now, researcher Serhiy Pankiv and co-workers in Anne Simonsen’s group identified the family of large BEACH domain-containing proteins (BDCPs) as sorting adaptors that, together with clathrin coat proteins, facilitate transport of transmembrane cargo to their destination.

In a collaborative effort, an international team of researchers, including Eivind Hovig and Mev Dominguez-Valentin from the Department of Tumor Biology at the Institute for Cancer Research, has identified six new cancer susceptibility genes using gene-based burden tests of rare germline variants. This significant discovery enhances the understanding of genetic predispositions to cancer. The results have recently been published in the prestigious journal Nature Genetics.

Earlier this year, Precision Immunotherapy Alliance (PRIMA) PI and co-director professor Johanna Olweus received a large Cancer Grand Challenges grant funded by Cancer Research UK and NIH together with a global team “MATCHMAKERS”. Within this team is the Nobel prize winner in chemistry 2024 David Baker who got the prize for his work on computational protein design. Professor Jan Terje Andersen is another PI within PRIMA that has followed Baker’s work closely over the years and he is currently collaborating with one of Baker’s many spin-out companies.

28 major projects now receive money for new and updated laboratories, equipment, databases and other research infrastructure. In total, the Norwegian Research Council will distribute NOK 1.3 billion. 

"We are excited to announce that the project “ATMP Norway – A National Multimodal Infrastructure for ATMP” has been awarded an infrastructure grant from the Research Council (74 MNOK)", says Anna Pasetto, Director of the Center for Advanced Cell Therapy (ACT) at the Section for Cell Therapy, Division for Cancer Treatment, Oslo University Hospital.