From left to right: Gaspar Taroncher-Oldenburg, Marko Kuisma, Jørn Skibsted Jakobsen, Carl Borrebaeck, Kristian Pietras, Kaisa Helminen and Mark Swindells engaging in the lively panel discussion.

Forward-looking session on cancer precision medicine

The panel discussion at the Precision Medicine session at NLS Days 2019.

Emerging therapies, digital solutions and AI were central topics when international experts met during the oncology session at the Nordic Life Science Days 2019.

Oslo Cancer Cluster hosted the session on oncology titled “Cancer precision medicine: State-of-the-art and future directions” at the Nordic Life Science Days this year. The session covered recent advances in cancer immunotherapy and cell- and gene therapies. International experts met to discuss how big data, artificial intelligence and digital solutions are changing drug development, diagnostics and patient care.

 

AI revolutionizing cancer research

Dr. Mark Swindells on artificial intelligence and drug discovery.

Mark Swindells on artificial intelligence and drug discovery.

Mark Swindells, PhD, COO Exscientia, presented how artificial intelligence is changing and driving drug discovery now.

“On average 2 500 compounds need to be synthesized and tested to develop a candidate molecule for clinical trials. We want to apply AI to this artisan area of drug discovery. By reducing the amount of compounds synthesized and tested, we will reduce the overall cost and time to get drugs to market,” Swindells said.

This is a fast moving area and one of the examples of technical innovation Swindells gave was Exscientia’s Active Learning algorithms, which have been benchmarked to work as well as – and in some cases better than – the most successful humans.

In the area of precision oncology, Swindells said: “We are particularly interested in the acquisition of resistance in oncology as an area where our technology could be applied.”

 

Kaisa Helminen, CEO Aiforia, focussed on how the use of artificial intelligence can make image analysis more accurate and efficient.

Dr. Kaisa Helminen on artificial intelligence and image analysis.

Kaisa Helminen on artificial intelligence and image analysis.

“Due to the ageing population, more samples need to be analysed and many countries suffer from serious shortage of pathologists. Many patients are left waiting for their diagnosis and treatment. Manual, visual image analysis is slow and highly subjective. There is a risk for misdiagnosis, which can be dramatic for the patient and costly for the healthcare system.”

Aiforia has built an AI platform that supports medical experts in diagnostics.

“For the first time we are bringing AI tools for doctors’ use, so they can easily create their own AI algorithms,” Helminen explained. “Instead of visually estimating something from samples, we bring accurate, numerical information. AI algorithms are consistent from day to day, week to week, removing the human error component,”

We are bringing AI tools for doctors’ use.

 

Marko Kuisma, Chief Commercial Officer at Kaiku Health, then presented a new digital platform for better patient monitoring, using machine learning tools.

Marko Kuisma on digital tools for better patient monitoring.

Marko Kuisma on digital tools for better patient monitoring.

Scientific evidence demonstrates that patients who use a digital symptom monitoring solution have an overall survival benefit, experience improved quality of life and go through less visits to the emergency room and hospitalisations.

“The traditional interventions that clinicians make are reactive and come with a delay,” Kuisma explained. “With digital symptom monitoring, interventions are still reactive, but more timely, because you can detect the symptoms early on. When applying machine learning, we make that monitoring proactive and predictive, taking action before symptoms and adverse effects develop.”

“… taking action before symptoms and adverse effects develop.”

 

Identifying gene mutations

Jørn Skibsted Jakobsen Md. Ph.D.,Vice president Science and Medicine TA Urology/Uro-Oncology, Global Clinical Research and Development, Ferring Pharmaceuticals, introduced emerging gene therapies to treat non muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) bladder cancer.

Jørn Skibsted Jakobsen on a radical new gene therapy.

Jørn Skibsted Jakobsen on a radical new gene therapy.

If a NMIBIC patient doesn’t respond to BCG (a type of immunotherapy drug), a cystectomy is still considered the gold standard treatment. This involves surgically removing all or parts of the urinary bladder, creation of a urinary diversion using a piece of the small intestine and leads to a significantly decreased quality of life for the patient.

Jakobsen introduced a new gene therapy to treat NMIBC patients that are unresponsive to BCG treatment.

“Early research suggests mutations in the surrounding tissue of the tumour potentially predict the subsequent recurrence of the disease,” Jakobsen said. “What if we were able to identify those mutations? And then create a personalised gene-based antibody directed at identified mutations. You could potentially treat patients before the recurring disease.”

“You could potentially treat patients before the recurring disease …”

 

Novel targets and pathways

Carl Borrebaeck, Professor, Lund University, and Kristian Pietras, Professor of Molecular Medicine, Lund University presented L2CancerBridge, a collaboration between the Swiss Centre of Lausanne and Lund University. They are exploring a new model for translational research in breast cancer and tumour immunology.

Carl Borrebaeck introduced L2CancerBridge.

Carl Borrebaeck introduced L2CancerBridge.

The tumor immunology team in Lausanne is focused on identifying novel targets on immunoregulatory cells as T cells and dendritic cells, with the goal of identifying new targets for CAR-T cells. The breast cancer team is focused on studies of tumour cells and their microenvironment with the goal to identify signalling pathways.

“We have been able to find signalling pathways between malignant cells and connective tissue,” Pietras said.

These pathways are crucial for basal-like breast cancer, the most aggressive breast cancer subtype, and block the development of resistance to endocrine therapy. Blocking them allows the use of effective endocrine therapies in cancers that previously did not have any targeted treatment options.

 

Gaspar Taroncher-Oldenburg, PhD; Editor-at-Large, Nature Publishing Group, moderated the session for the second year in a row.

“I have been impressed by how much thought both co-hosts of the event—Jutta Heix from the Oslo Cancer Cluster and Carl Borrebaeck from Lund University—put into weaving together a compelling story that is timely and relevant, both locally and globally.” Taroncher-Oldenburg said.

“Of course, much of the credit for the session being successful goes to the panelists, who again this year captured the audience’s attention through a combination of intriguing presentations and a dynamic roundtable discussion that broadly illustrated different aspects–present and future—of precision medicine in oncology.”

“A compelling story that is timely and relevant, both locally and globally.”

Norway for life science

The Norway for life science stand at NLS days 2019.

The biggest key players from the life science industry in Norway came together in Malmö with a common goal: to promote Norwegian life science and build Nordic collaboration.

The life science industry in Norway is booming and collaboration across Nordic borders is of increasing importance. That is why Oslo Cancer Cluster arranged the stand “Norway for Life Science” this year at the Nordic Life Science Days in Malmö.

Among the participants of the stand were governmental institutions, cluster organisations, private companies and academic institutions.

 

Promoting collaboration

On Wednesday, a delegation from the Norwegian Embassy in Sweden attended for an informal meet and greet with the Norwegian life science milieu. This was an excellent opportunity to share knowledge about Nordic cooperation and to strengthen joint activities within the life sciences.

See the video with Kirsten Hammelbo, Minister / Deputy Head of Mission, Norwegian Embassy below.

 

Standing together

The participants of the stand were altogether positive about the initiative and agreed it was a constructive platform to build new relationships. We asked some of the participants the same question: Why is it important for you to be here at NLS days?

“Our main focus here at NLS Days is Nordic collaboration, both public and private, to promote the life science industry.”
Catherine Capdeville, Senior Adviser, Innovation Norway

“It is important to follow what is happening in the industry and in other innovation environments. We are here to nurture our existing contacts and find new partners.”
Morten Egeberg, Administrative leader, UiO Life Science

“Firstly, it is important to show that Norway stands together. This is a significant meeting place. We consider the Nordic countries to be our home market, so we try to present what we do here. It is important for one actor to take responsibility, like Oslo Cancer Cluster does, so that we can collectively gather here.”
Anita Moe Larsen, Head of Communication, Norway Health Tech

“In the long term, we have research projects where we are looking for contacts in the life science industry – both partners of collaboration and potential clients. We are here to promote the centre and let everyone know that we exist.”
Alexandra Patriksson, Senior Adviser, Centre for Digital Life

“We are here to strengthen our collaboration with the best research environments in neuroscience. We want to show that the health industry in Norway is growing and what we can do when we stand together.”
Bjarte Reve, CEO, Nansen Neuroscience Network

“We are happy to contribute to make Norwegian life sciences visible and to show what Norway can offer as a host country, and attract potential investors and collaborating partners in research and innovation. And especially to make visible and be a part of the Norwegian community in this field. It is unusual in Norway that so many different players, both public and private, stand together in one stand – with one common goal.”
Espen Snipstad, Communications Manager, LMI

 

Full list of partners:

 

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The panelists during our breakfast meeting about precision medicine in Arendal: (from left to right) Audun Hågå, Director (Norwegian Medicines Agency), Per Morten Sandset, vice principal for Innovation (University of Oslo), Tuva Moflag (Ap), Marianne Synnes (H), Geir Jørgen Bekkevold (KrF).

Together for precision medicine

Debate from Arendalsuka

During Arendalsuka 2019, we arranged a breakfast meeting on the development of cancer treatments of the future, together with LMI and Kreftforeningen.

Arendalsuka has become an important arena for those who want to improve aspects of Norwegian society. We were there this year to meet key players to accelerate the development of cancer treatments.

Our main event of the week was a collaboration with Legemiddelindustrien (LMI) and The Norwegian Cancer Society (Kreftforeningen). We wanted to highlight the cancer treatments of the future and whether Norway is equipped to keep up with the rapid developments in precision medicine. (Read a summary of the event in Norwegian on LMI’s website)

First speaker, Line Walen (LMI), presented the problems with the traditional system for approving new treatments in face of precision medicine.

The second presenter, Kjetil Taskén (Oslo University Hospital), introduced their new plan at Oslo University Hospital to implement precision medicine.

Then, Steinar Aamdal (University of Oslo) talked about what we can learn from Denmark when implementing precision medicine.

Lastly, Ole Aleksander Opdalshei (Norwegian Cancer Society) highlighted a new proposal for legislation from the government.

The exciting program was followed by a lively discussion between both politicians and cancer experts.

There was general agreement in the panel that developments are not happening fast enough and that the Norwegian health infrastructure and system for approving new treatments is not prepared to handle precision medicine, even though cancer patients need it immediately.

The panelists proposed some possible solutions:

  • Better collaboration and public-private partnerships between the health industry and the public health sector.
  • More resources to improve the infrastructure for clinical trials, with both staff, equipment and financial incentives.
  • Better use of the Norwegian health data registries.

After the debate, we interviewed a few of the participants and attendees. We asked: which concrete measures are needed for Norway to get going with precision medicine?

Watch the six-minute video below (in Norwegian) to find out what they said. (Turn up the sound)

 

Did you miss the meeting? View the whole video below on YouTube (in Norwegian).

 

Full list of participants:

  • Wenche Gerhardsen, Head of Communications, Oslo Cancer Cluster (Moderator)
  • Line Walen, Senior Adviser, LMI
  • Kjetil Taskén, director Institute for Cancer Research, Oslo University Hospital
  • Steinar Aamdal, professor emeritus, University of Oslo
  • Ole Aleksander Opdalshei, assisting general secretary, The Norwegian Cancer Society
  • Marianne Synnes (H), politician
  • Geir Jørgen Bekkevold (KrF), politician
  • Tuva Moflag (Ap), politician
  • Per Morten Sandset, vice principal for Innovation, University of Oslo
  • Audun Hågå, Director Norwegian Medicines Agency

 

Thank you to all participants and attendees!

The next event in this meeting series will take place in Oslo in the beginning of next year. More information will be posted closer to the event.

We hope to see you again!

 

Organisers:

 

 

 

 

 

Sponsors:

 

 

 

 

 

Meet our new members

Oslo Cancer Cluster proudly presents the new members that have joined our organisation during the second quarter of 2019.

The new members represent a valuable addition to our non-profit member organisation, which encompasses the whole oncology value chain. By being a part of Oslo Cancer Cluster, our members are connected to a global network with many relevant key players in the cancer research field. Our members contribute to this unique ecosystem and ensure the development of innovative cancer treatments to improve patients’ lives.

 

theradex logo

 

Theradex Oncology

Theradex Oncology provides global clinical development services exclusively to companies developing new cancer treatments. The company has a strong emphasis on early drug development. It provides regulatory and medical support for companies taking cancer treatments into clinical development in the US and Europe.

Theradex Oncology staff has participated in educational events at Oslo Cancer Cluster for a number of years. This is how they became familiar with the cluster.

“Oslo Cancer Cluster provides a unique opportunity to share knowledge with other professionals dedicated to developing new cancer treatments.” Meg Valnoski, President Theradex Oncology

Meg Valnoski explains how the company has been supporting the development of cancer treatments for over 30 years and experienced the advancements in cancer treatments over that time.

 “We are always working to expand our knowledge and experience in cancer drug development to support our partnerships with companies developing new therapies for cancer treatment.”

Catapult life science logo

Catapult Life Science

Catapult Life Science is a centre established to bridge the gap between the lab and the industry, providing infrastructure, equipment and expertise for product development and industrialisation in Norway. It has been formed as a result of joint efforts from a range of different players with a common goal of enabling more industrialisation of life science research in Norway, truly what the Norwegians call a dugnad.

“We see Oslo Cancer Cluster as a key partner for realising our purpose, which is to create new opportunities for product development and industrialisation in Norway.” Astrid Hilde Myrset, CEO Catapult Life Science

Myrset adds:

“Our vision is ‘Bringing science to life’, which implies enabling new ideas to a be developed in Norway for new employment in the pharma industry, new growth in the Norwegian economy, and last but not least, new products to the market, enabling a longer and healthier life for patients.”

 

This post is part of a series of articles, which will introduce the new members of our organisation every three months.

  • To find out who else is involved in Oslo Cancer Cluster, view the full list of members
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