Pathology award to CCBIO postdoc
Professor Kreyberg's Prize is awarded every leap year day to the best dissertation in the field of pathology during the last 4 years. An award of NOK 100.000 goes this year to Dr.Med. Elisabeth Wik, Fellow at the Department of Clinical Medicine and CCBIO Postdoc.
Main content
Elisabeth receives the 2nd prize of NOK 100 000 for her research on uterine cancer. The 1st prize of NOK 200 000 goes to Dr. Med. Eirik Sundlisæter at the University of Oslo (UiO).
Personalised treatment for patients
Elisabeth Wik has in her doctoral work investigated gene mutations and protein biomarkers in uterine cancer. Her findings may prove to be important to personalize treatment for the individual patient with uterine cancer.
Cancer is caused by genetic defects in cancer cells which make them grow and spread without control. The mutations differ both between different cancer types and from patient to patient in the same cancer type. Detailed knowledge of the individual patient's tumor is therefore important to provide as effective treatment as possible.
Dr. Wik has studied a large number of patients with uterine cancer. She has established a new classification of this disease and she has identified many genetic mutations that may be important for prognosis and treatment. The doctoral work is conducted at the Department of Clinical Medicine at the University of Bergen. Dr. Wik currently works during education in pathology at Haukeland University Hospital and is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Cancer Biomarkers CCBIO at the University of Bergen.
Driven by curiousity
"I would like to thank the supervisors of my PhD project, Helga Salvesen and Lars Akslen, who took the leap into gene expression technology when this was still new, and who let me work with this type of data", Elisabeth says. "It has been very exciting for a Curious George like me to get to dive into the large amounts of data and look for the secrets hiding there. At the same time it was challenging, and the task at hand could occasionally seem overwhelming. I also want to thank the many co-authors for good and valuable contributions to the study of which my dissertation is based."
"I receive the award with great humility", Elisabeth explains. "Professor Kreyberg was a researcher of dimensions, who achieved so much during his professional life, in medicine and research. When looking at the many varied activities in his life, I think that he might have been driven by a certain amount of curiousity in many areas. Maybe it was the curious nature that brought both Kreyberg and me to Afghanistan in connection with work", she reflects. "It might also have been that which brought us both into the pathology discipline? Sometimes you cross a path, also at different times, in ways you could not anticipate."
We congratulate!
Other curious minds can read about Elisabeth's time in Afghanistan in this letter printed in Tidsskrift for Den norske legeforening (in Norwegian).
Facts
The award ceremony will be February 29th at Gamle festsal in Domus Academica at the University of Oslo. Read press release (in Norwegian).
Professor Leiv Kreyberg (1896-1984) was Professor in Pathology 1936-1964. He did research on cancer, and discovered among other that lung cancer could be caused by inhaled cigarette smoke, asbestos and nickel. He founded the Professor Kreyberg Fund for Experimental Pathology by donation in 1964.
The Professor Kreyberg Fund for Experimental Pathology:
A prize is awarded every leap year to the author of of the best doctoral dissertation published within the last 4 years, in the field of experimental pathology. The prize is up to NOK 400.000, and can be divided into a 1st prize of 2/3 and a 2nd prize of 1/3 of the amount.
It is assumed that morphological techniques have been used in the project. In relation to the statutes it is also in particularly meritiorius if the candidate has shown ingenuity and originality in the choice of methods, and has been working with simple and inexpensive means. The work should mainly have been carried out by a Norwegian citizen at a Norwegian institution. Veterinary pathological and zoopathological work can come into consideration, but at otherwise identical conditions, the human pathological work should be preferred. The prize is essentially intended as an encouragement to a Norwegian pathologist who wish to develop an original idea or method that can give increased insight into human pathological processes and contribute to the development of the subject of pathology.
