Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is the most common form of leukemia in Europe and it remains incurable. Targeted therapies have made a breakthrough in the treatment of CLL over the last decade. However, many patients develop resistance, have severe side effects or relapse during treatment. To prevent ineffective treatment and toxic effects, there is an unmet clinical need for tailoring optimal therapy for each patient.

Our research group focuses on developing functional precision medicine for B-cell malignancies, in particular CLL. By performing functional analyses such as drug sensitivity screening and single cell signaling analyses directly on the patients' cancer cells, our aim is to identify biomarker signatures that can predict treatment outcomes for the individual patient, and thus guide treatment decisions.

Select publications

1. Hermansen JU, Yin Y, Urban A, Myklebust CV, Karlsen L, Melvold K, Tveita AA, Taskén K, Munthe LA, Tjønnfjord GE, Skånland SS. A tumor microenvironment model of chronic lymphocytic leukemia enables drug sensitivity testing to guide precision medicine. Cell Death Discov. 2023 Apr 13;9(1):125.
2. Yin Y, Athanasiadis P, Karlsen L, Urban A, Xu H, Murali I, Fernandes SM, Arribas AJ, Hilli AK, Taskén K, Bertoni F, Mato AR, Normant E, Brown JR, Tjønnfjord GE, Aittokallio T, Skånland SS. Functional testing to characterize and stratify PI3K inhibitor responses in chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Clinical Cancer Research, 2022, 28(20):4444-4455.
3. Skånland SS and Tjønnfjord GE. Determining drug dose in the era of targeted therapies: playing it (un)safe? Blood Cancer Journal, 2022, 12(8):123.
4. Skånland SS, Inngjerdingen M, Bendiksen H, York J, Spetalen S, Munthe LA, Tjønnfjord GE. Functional testing of relapsed chronic lymphocytic leukemia guides precision medicine and maps response and resistance mechansims. An index case. Haematologica, 2022, 107(8):1994-1998.
5. Melvold K, Giliberto M, Karlsen L, Ayuda-Durán P, Hanes R, Holien T, Enserink J, Brown JR, Tjønnfjord GE, Taskén K, Skånland SS. Mcl-1 and Bcl-xL levels predict responsiveness to dual MEK/Bcl-2 inhibition in B-cell malignancies. Mol Oncol, 2022, Mar;16(5):1153-1170.
6. Skånland SS, Cremaschi A, Bendiksen H, Hermansen JU, Thimiri Govinda Raj DB, Munthe LA, Tjønnfjord GE, Taskén K. An in vitro assay for biomarker discovery and dose prediction applied to ibrutinib plus venetoclax treatment of CLL. Leukemia, 2020, 34(2):478-487.

Contact information

  sigrid.skanland@ous-research.no

Department of Cancer Immunology, Institute for Cancer Research
Oslo University Hospital, Ullernchausseen 70, 0379 Oslo, Norway