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Highlights from Oslo Cancer Cluster in 2023

Here are seven highlights from this eventful year.

A decorative image with the large, bold text "2023" displayed prominently in the center. The background features an intricate design of orange, yellow, and red circular patterns suspended by thin vertical lines, giving a three-dimensional, abstract appearance. The combination of these elements creates a modern and artistic aesthetic, suggesting a theme of innovation, progress, or celebration for the year 2023.
Published

Dec 18, 2023

Author

Wenche Gerhardsen

2023 has seen the crystallization of several significant developments at Oslo Cancer Cluster. We’ve immersed ourselves in the cancer mission, initiated new endeavors both nationally and across Europe, and welcomed new members into our community.

Growing the Community

Throughout the year, we’ve been delighted to witness growth in both our membership and physical space.

For a sneak peek at the ongoing construction between the Innovation Park and the Institute for Cancer Research, you can visit the live building site webcam on the Innovation Park website.

Connecting efforts

A new cluster collaboration came to life in 2023. A primary task at Oslo Cancer Cluster is to foster connections within the cancer innovation sphere. Facilitating investment opportunities for emerging companies is a vital part of this process. At the start of the year, we reinforced our collaboration with other health and life science clusters in Norway to achieve this, aiming for increased success among Norwegian companies. This initiative is led by The Life Science Cluster and supported by Viken County for two years.

The non-profit company HealthCatalyst brings together Oslo Cancer Cluster, Norway Health Tech, and the Norwegian Smart Care Cluster to enhance testing facilities for health companies. In June, the company forged a new collaboration agreement with NorTrials Medical Equipment, aiming to elevate Norway as a testing ground for health technologies.

The CONNECT consortium for precision cancer medicine has had a remarkable year. Discover this year’s milestones for the consortium in a separate article on the CONNECT-website.

And here is the animation explainer that CONNECT made to explain personalised medicine (in Norwegian only).

Big and small meeting places

Cancer Crosslinks 2023 centred around the theme “New dimensions to the hallmarks of cancer: How is the last decade of discoveries advancing our understanding of cancer biology and transforming precision medicine.” It served as a day of inspiration, insights, and interactions for professionals from across the cancer field in Norway and beyond.

Interested in joining Cancer Crosslinks 2024? The theme for next year is “Bridging innovations to improve clinical outcomes for cancer patients.”

Throughout the year, we’ve organized smaller gatherings for our members and community, such as the Summer gathering and the December gathering. These meetings occur every June and December, and we hope to see you there next year!

Our incubator has also facilitated smaller meetings between start-ups and potential investors. During one such occasion in the summer, US healthcare and life science investors visited.

Finally, we were present at the large venues too. One of these was the Nordic Life Science Days in Copenhagen, where Oslo Cancer Cluster coordinated the joint booth Norway for Life Science, promoting the Norwegian healthcare and life science industry.

Our take on the Cancer Mission

This year, we’ve raised the question, “How can Norway succeed with the EU’s Mission on Cancer?” loudly and clearly. Explore discussions and insights from two seminars in the meeting series “The Future of Cancer Treatments” held during 2023. The seminars are also available on our YouTube channel.

The Cancer Mission Hub Norway is another crucial arena for the same topic. Oslo Cancer Cluster proudly collaborates within this hub. In May 2023, we commenced work with 56 other organizations spanning 28 countries in the EU project called ECHoS. It received a 6-million-euro grant from The European Union. Read about our plans through this consortium in these two articles:

Health industry milestones in Norway

Oslo Cancer Cluster continued to act as a Changemaker in 2023. In the cluster strategy for 2023-25, this is one of our three roles, aiming to improve the framework for cancer innovations in the Norwegian health industry. This involves contributing input to relevant national policies and addressing specific challenges. Discover more on our webpage. Additionally, watch our participation in the parliamentary health committee hearing on our YouTube-channel. Note that most of the content is in Norwegian.

In late summer, the government published its roadmap for the health industry, focusing on commercializing research and developing health as a green export success.

Young talents

Ullern Upper Secondary School and Oslo Cancer Cluster have a mutually rewarding school collaboration. In 2023, numerous engaging activities took place with students, their mentors, student research projects, and student work placements.

Explore the students’ activities on the school collaboration homepage (all news in Norwegian) and contact us if you have questions about the collaboration.

Projects coming together

Throughout the year, we’ve closely followed the AnteNor project, learning extensively about polygenic risk scores (PRS) and their significance in future cancer prevention and early detection.

Exploring the improvement possibilities in manufacturing T-cell therapies was the focal point at a workshop organized by the CellFIT project in Trondheim in October. The seminar convened project partners and experts to address a significant challenge for cell-based cancer therapy – the need for efficient and scalable production.