- Medical genetics Unit
I am employed on the project "Multiple breast malignancies in dogs; improved understanding of disease progression by human-canine comparison" led by Prof. Frode Lingaas. The project is executed in close collaboration with Dr. Therese Sørlie and her group at the Radium hospital (Institute for Cancer Research).
By training I am a molecular biologist. I have a PhD anchored in immunology where I used DNA/RNA to explore the evolution and function of the alternative immune strategy seen in Atlantic cod (loss of MHCII). After my PhD, I focused on comparative analyses, mainly concerning immunity in jawed vertebrates. I have also spent some time in a more human-clinical environment at the Radium hospital but have now returned to comparative research focusing on cancer and disease mechanisms in dogs compared to humans. Here we mainly work on expression profiling and genomic variants, as well as pathology and immunohistochemistry from dog tumors. This material is compared to standards and findings in human breast cancer. Using this comparison, we wish to evaluate the dog as a model for breast cancer development in humans, as well as using the dog’s unique genetic background (low genetic diversity) to obtain improve understanding of cancer development in mammals.
Previously, I spent a lot of time in the lab, but now most of my research is performed on DNA/RNA using high performance computing and various bioinformatics tools.
Publications