COLLABORATION. All seats were reserved before this year’s Research Day, both for Sahlgrenska Academy and Sahlgrenska University Hospital. Over three hundred listeners filled the seats of the Wallenberg Auditorium where both pre-clinical and clinical cutting edge research were presented.
Sahlgrenska University Hospital Director Barbro Fridén started the day together with Olle Larkö, Dean at Sahlgrenska Academy.
“A neuroscientist once told me that daydreaming is good, it makes you more creative. Today, we have the chance to create new cerebral synapses, and by letting our thoughts wander freely and connecting it to our own research, it might eventually create new collaborations and research lines,” said Barbro Fridén.
“There are approximately 3,000 research projects currently underway at Sahlgrenska Academy and many of them are executed in collaboration with Sahlgrenska University Hospital. The Hospital and Academy work extremely well together, and have done so for many years,” Olle Larkö.
He noted that medical research in Gothenburg is highly ranked, 45th in the world and 12th in Europe, according to the Shanghai Ranking presented last fall.
Inspirational day
Two of the day’s listeners were Ann-Charlotte Almstrand and Hatice Koca Akdeva, both research chemists in Occupational and Environmental Medicine. They enjoyed the day’s program very much.
“It provides good insight into the research and lets you put a face on the successful researcher you have previously heard so much about, and hear them present what they do,” said Hatice Koca Akdeva.
“It will be fun to hear Fredrik Bäckhed and Ingmar Skoog,” said Ann-Charlotte Almstrand, whose own research concerns, among other things, methods for analyzing cytokines in exhalations.
She continues,
“As a young researcher, it is fun when you can see the common denominators and maybe unexpected collaborative opportunities that you otherwise might not have considered.”
During the morning, three main seminars were given on nephrology, geriatric research and pediatrics and adolescents. After lunch, two parallel sessions followed, with four seminars to choose from during each session.
Potential target of nephrology drugs
Professors Jenny Nyström and Börje Haraldsson along with Transplantation Surgeon John Søfteland presented research on new treatment possibilities for patients with renal disease. Jenny Nyström works with the renal disease IgA-neuropathy, which means that the IgA antibody accumulates in the network of fine blood vessels in the kidney where blood filtration occurs.
“The theory is that IgA has become abnormally glycosylated and therefore clumps together and builds complexes that fasten in the glomeruli where a cascade of things happen that destroys the kidneys’ ability to filter the blood. What is interesting is that there are people who have abnormally glycosylated IgA and remain healthy, we know this by comparing samples from patients with renal disease and healthy relatives,” said Jenny Nyström.
In Gothenburg, research in nephrology has long collected renal biopsies in a broad collaboration with surgeons and pathologists. The biopsies are microdissected and used as the base for cell cultures. Urine and blood samples are also collected for kidney research.
With the excellent help of others, such as the Proteomics Core Facility at Medicinareberget, the research group has identified a number of unique proteins that bind to IgA, by “fishing with IgA bait”. The group has also identified a receptor that appears to be a good candidate as a target for future drugs against IgA-neuropathy.
Turned failure into success
Börje Haraldsson who now spends a lot of time at the Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation in Basel, described work with a promising new drug for metastatic renal cancer that is currently incurable. The drug is based on toxins found in Cortinarius rubellus, a mushroom that is common in Western Sweden and often grows together with trumpet chanterelles Every year these poisonous mushrooms are accidently eaten by inexperienced mushroom pickers, which results in kidney failure within a few days.
“We had a case where a couple went into renal failure after having eaten the mushrooms. We started looking for an antitoxin and that is how we came to study how the poison works. But the antitoxin we developed was not helpful and instead made things worse. After this failure, it hit us that the active substance in the mushroom, orellanine, might even be able to attack renal cancer cells,” explained Börje Haraldsson.
A prestudy on human cells in cultures and rats as tumor-bearers, showed that this was the case. A company, Oncorena AB, has been founded and preclinical studies have been conducted. Toxicological studies are currently underway in France, in accordance with GLP, Good Laboratory Practice. The clinical studies have been delayed, but in all probability will be able be started at the end of the year.
Protect the healthy kidney
Börje Haraldsson ended his presentation with some good advice to other researchers that are on the trail of a new drug,
“Turn to the Medical Products Agency – Sweden, early on. There you will receive advice and collegiate support. They have the same goals as we do, to test if this can cure people and save them from an otherwise deadly disease,” said Börje Haraldsson.
Orellanine is an aggressive toxin that specifically targets the kidneys. To be able to use it as a drug, the patient’s other healthy kidney has to be protected from the effects of the poison. The solution that researchers are working with is a so-called ex-vivo perfusion of the kidney presented by Transplant Surgeon and Doctoral Candidate, John Søfteland. Research is done on pigs in Igelösa, outside of Lund, where kidneys have been able to be maintained outside of the pig’s body for up to five days and then retransplanted into the pig’s body with good results.
AgeCap’s major population study
AgeCap, Centre for Ageing and Health, recently became a part of the University’s investment in global societal problems in UGOT Challenges. Thus, the research center is expanding to include several faculties and more research groups. Ingmar Skoog, Director of AgeCap, explains that the population studies H70, H85 and the Prospective Population Study of Women in Gothenburg (PPSW) are longstanding and filled with new test subject cohorts to enable generation comparisons.
“In contrast to laboratory research, we are never able to say that A leads to B, as we are out in the real world. Life is complicated and full of confounders,” said Ingmar Skoog, which made the audience laugh. A “confounding variable” is a variable in a statistical model that correlates directly or inversely with both the dependent and the independent variable.
Kaj Blennow, Professor of Neurochemistry, presented work with markers for brain damage and Alzheimer’s.
How do the probands perceive the studies?
Examinations for the population studies are comprehensive and take the whole day. Synneve Dahlin-Ivanoff, Professor and Occupational Therapist, explained the use of qualitative methods in population studies. She described a study that will be completed during the year, where last year they conducted focus group interviews with the elderly who had opted to participate in the study. What previous familiarity and experience do they have in participating in such a thorough social, medical and psychological study? Their discussion brought to light that many felt chosen to participate, and that they felt it to be an exciting and challenging experience. The examination was perceived as more comprehensive than they had initially understood it to be, and that the questions could be discomfiting.
Adapted parenteral nutrition
The third and last main morning seminar concerned premature infants. Henrik Hagberg, Carina Mallard, Ann Hellström, Bo Jacobsson and Karin Sävman based their presentations on a fictional, but realistic and gripping example – the 32-year-old primapara Emma, whose son Olle was born at 25 weeks.
Ann Hellström, Professor and Senior Consulting Physician at the pediatric eye clinic at Östra Hospital, is a world-leading expert on ROP (Retinopathy of prematurity) eye disease, a condition that can affect immature retinal blood vessels in a premature infant’s eyes. The research group has previously been able to show that the fatty omega-3 acid can protect the vision of extremely premature offspring in mice. Recently, she received a large grant from the Swedish Research Council from the call for proposals in clinical treatment research for a randomized multi-center study of extremely premature infants. These children require intravenous nutrition for at least a couple of weeks after birth, sometimes with fats, but the fats that are currently used are adapted for adults,” explained Ann Hellström.
Eight seminars after lunch
In the afternoon, Research Day offered a further eight seminars in two parallel sessions. Before the coffee break, the listeners could choose between seminars on psychiatric disorders, melanoma, person-centered care and stroke, and after the coffee break, they could choose to hear about orthopedic research, the effects of intestinal microbiota on health and disease, image based diagnostics and treatment or listen to actual translational research at the Sahlgrenska Cancer Center.
TEXT AND PHOTO: ELIN LINDSTRÖM CLAESSEN
