Project: Studies at protein level, on human cancer cell lines and malignant melanomas for the identification of biomarkers for metastasizing and targeted therapy.
The aim of the project is to find biomarkers for malignant melonoma which will develop metastasis, and markers for sensitivity and resistance to treatment in malignant melanoma. We will investigate chemotherapeutic drugs and immunologically based agents. We are focusing on biomarkers involved in various aspects of the regulation of cell cycle progression and apoptosis from the gene level to the functional protein level. We aim at finding combinations of predictive biomarkers at the gene, mRNA, and protein levels for targeted treatment.

Project: Studies on prognostic cellbiologic indicators in endometrioid endometrial carcinoma.
Cancer treatment is often dependent on the knowledge of reliable prognostic factors; it is important to create adequate high- and low risk groups in order to identify patients that need a more advanced therapy and to spare those who do not. Flowcytometric (FCM) DNA ploidy, diploid versus non-diploid, is used according to the national Swedish health care protocol for FIGO stage I endometrial carcinoma. DNA FCM has been improved leading to reproducible estimation of S-phase fraction, proliferation, (SPF). In this project we study the prognostic importance of data from flow cytometric DNA ploidy status and SPF analyses, performed on formalin fixed and paraffin embedded curettage samples, with classic histopathologic factors in relation to overall, progression-free, disease specific and relative survival and to location of recurrence on patients with endometrial carcinoma.