Novel blood cancer biomarker strategy receives Cancer Society funding

The Norwegian Cancer Society has granted NOK 7 million over 4 years to a CCBIO project led by Professor Bjørn Tore Gjertsen.

Title of the project is "Functionalized Personal Medicine: Patient stratification strategies by integrated functional profiling of cancer cells."

Personalalized therapy

The project aims to test if novel diagnostics through single cancer cell signalling network profiling could direct personalized therapy. Furthermore, examine if single cancer cell signalling network profiling reflects genetic alterations in cancers with multiple clones. The group will test blood cancer cells from patients in clinical trials with second generation tryosine kinase inhibitors like nilotinib and dasatinib. A new possible medicine against cancer, a small molecule inhibitor of Axl, will be analyzed in the first cancer patients during late 2014 and 2015.

Change future practice

Experience from this novel cancer biomarker strategy in blood cancer patients will form the basis for functionalized personal medicine approaches in future clinical practice.