Stakeholders
“A special thank you to The Research Council of Norway and project partners for their support for the CellFit Project.”
– Charlotte Homme, Oslo Cancer Cluster
The Department of Cellular Therapy at Oslo University Hospital is home to one of the largest GMP certified academic facilities to produce cellular products in Europe. It is one of the few European sites that participated in Novartis’ trials with CD19-specific CAR T cells and later, other companies.
The department has 7 cleanrooms for therapy production, a leukapheresis unit and a quality assurance laboratory. Its facility is the only one in Norway that has the infrastructure and expertise able to perform clinical scale development of this type of ACT.
Located at Oslo Cancer Cluster Innovation Park, The Department of Cellular Therapy is the Project Lead for The CellFit Project, funded by The Research Council of Norway.
Oslo Cancer Cluster is a non-profit oncology research and industry cluster whose core expertise is immune-oncology, clinical trials, and precision cancer medicine. Its members represent the oncology value chain and whose work ranges from exploratory research to delivering novel therapeutics and diagnostics to patients worldwide.
OCC has an essential role to ensure stakeholder involvement and will support The CellFit Project through advisory activities and by providing potential forums to further engage and share knowledge.
Working in coordination with the Project Manager, OCC will create dialogue and collaboration between OCC members and CellFit, and work to include members of the ecosystem and industry working within the CellFit core areas as stakeholders to reflect on and guide the responsible research and innovation performed in the project.
The Department of Biotechnology and Nanomedicine at SINTEF has unique infrastructure and competence within process development for the development of cell production processes.
The department continuously develops methodology relevant for new immunotherapies and has international leading expertise on high throughput screening. This enables them to produce a large amount of high-quality data.
Overall, the infrastructure and expertise at SINTEF are ideally suited to address the challenge of optimizing T‐cell expansion in an efficient way SINTEF is a broad, multidisciplinary research organisation with international top-level expertise in the fields of technology, the natural sciences, medicine, and the social sciences.
SINTEF conducts contract R&D as a partner for the private and public sectors, and they are one of the largest contract research institutions in Europe.
Thermo Fisher Scientific is one of the world’s largest technology providers in the life sciences with over 130,000 employees and a strong innovation focus.
Life Technologies AS, part of Thermo Fisher Scientific, manufactures and develops Dynabeads which is a critical component in one of the most promising cancer treatments on the market (CAR-T therapy).
The magnetic beads are well known for their unique specifications and manufacturing process that allow the use of the beads in advanced life sciences applications.
Norsk Industri and Siemens named the Norwegian part of the company “Norway’s smartest industrial company” in 2018 and in 2017 they were awarded Teknisk Ukeblad’s technology prize “Norwegian Tech Award” and The Research Norwegian Council’s Innovation Prize. The Norway site is part of Great Place to Work and is proud of being ranked as the 3rd best place to work for mid-sized companies in Norway in 2021.
Project Management Group, Cellfit Project
Senior Scientist; Ph.D., Group leader & Head of Immunomonitoring
The project manager Else Marit Inderberg is group leader at Translational Research Unit (Dept. of Cellular Therapy, OUH). In addition, she has been Head of the Immunomonitoring Unit for the last 7 years and…
The project manager Else Marit Inderberg is group leader at Translational Research Unit (Dept. of Cellular Therapy, OUH). In addition, she has been Head of the Immunomonitoring Unit for the last 7 years and is currently overseeing 12 ongoing clinical studies (both academic and industry-driven). Her team is composed of 5 technicians, 2 postdocs and 2 PhD students (both MDs). Her labs, located at the OCCI, are fully equipped to run established methods for analysis of T-cell responses (proliferation, cytokine production, target cell killing and in vivo assays) including high-throughput technologies such as mass cytometry (CyTOF) and live-cell imaging system. She was also PI of the NFR-BIOTEK-2021 TCR project where the TCR was isolated and the pre-clinical development of the therapy was performed, co-inventor of 15 patents and co-founder of Ultimovacs AS and Zelluna Immunotherapy AS.
Head of Memberships and Events, Oslo Cancer Cluster
Master of Science in Project Management, The George Washington University (School of Business and Public Management)
Charlotte Homme leads membership and events for Oslo Cancer Cluster…
Charlotte Homme leads membership and events for Oslo Cancer Cluster, a member organization dedicated to cancer innovation, connecting the oncology ecosystem, and attracting and developing life science talents.
Prior to joining Oslo Cancer Cluster Charlotte Homme worked with The Norwegian Government, The World Bank, John Hopkins University, and The Economist.
Senior Research Scientist, Ph.D. in Biomedicine
Master of Technology in Industrial chemistry and biotechnology from NTNU, 2008 PhD in Biomedicine from University of Bergen, 2013
Hanne Haslene-Hox has worked in SINTEF since 2013, and participated and lead projects within a broad field of application…
Hanne Haslene-Hox has worked in SINTEF since 2013, and participated and lead projects within a broad field of application in Department of Biotechnology and Nanomedicine. Hanne has had a particular focus on development of cellular bioprocesses for therapeutic applications (such as cellular therapies, extracellular vesicles and proteins) and cellular models for high-throughput and high-content screening.
Sr. Manager R&D Cell Therapy at Thermo Fisher Scientific
Master in Immunology (2005) and PhD in Cell Biology (2012) from the University of Oslo.
Tuva Holt Hereng has led the R&D cell therapy team in Norway for 5 years and has 10 years of experience from…
Tuva Holt Hereng has led the R&D cell therapy team in Norway for 5 years and has 10 years of experience from early drug development from start-up companies such as Spermatech and Arctic Pharma. Her team develops reagents and instruments for clinical manufacturing of cell therapies. In the CellFit project, Tuva and her team will contribute with knowhow and tools for isolation, activation, and expansion of T-cells to generate a clinical protocol for manufacturing of T-cells with improved therapeutic efficacy.
Project, Key Personnel
Sébastien Wälchli is group leader at the Translational Research Unit, Department of Cellular Therapy.
He is an expert in molecular biology and biotechnology…
He is an expert in molecular biology and biotechnology and has made key discoveries in TCR and CAR development. He provides molecular tools for extended immunomonitoring in academic clinical studies. He is the inventor for >15 patents and co-founder of Zelluna Immunotherapy AS.
Dag Josefsen, Head of Department of Cellular Therapy.
He has expertise in cellular therapy, stem cell research, GMP requirements and directives for cellular therapy and is a certified…
He has expertise in cellular therapy, stem cell research, GMP requirements and directives for cellular therapy and is a certified JACIE (Joint Accreditation Committee of the International Society for Cellular Therapy and EBMT) inspector.
Anna Winge-Main is Chief Consultant in Oncology, a researcher (50%) working on the development of T-cell therapy in melanoma at the Department of Cellular Therapy.
PhD (Bioinformatics-Genetics), Oslo University, the thesis was directed on genomics signatures in progression of breast cancer with reference to gynecological carcinomas.
Master of Bioinformatics and System Biology, Chalmers University…
Work experience: Currently work as a postdoctoral (bioinformatics) research fellow in cell therapy at Oslo University Hospital.
Work interest: R | R Shiny | Python | MATLAB | Next Generation Sequencing (DNA & RNA- sequencing pipeline) | Survival Analysis | Test Statistics | Genomics | Transcriptomics | Proteomics | Flow / Mass Cytometry | ML
2018 – 2021: Post-Doc, Tumor Biology Department, Radium Hospitalet: worked on “BigMed” project, RNA-Sequencing pipe-line TCGA & ICGC database, precision oncology.
2013 – 2018: Post-Doc, Medical Genetics, Ullevål Hospital: wokred on a pipe-line for the qualitative and quantitative of HLA data using RNA-Seq, analysis of immunological characterization of T-cell & B-cells.
Scientist III R&D Cell Therapy at Thermo Fisher Scientific, Ph.D.
Maxi-Lu Böschen joined the R&D Cell Therapy team in Norway in March 2021 and has 9 years of research experience within the cell therapy field. The focus of her PhD was…
Maxi-Lu Böschen joined the R&D Cell Therapy team in Norway in March 2021 and has 9 years of research experience within the cell therapy field. The focus of her PhD was T cell receptor-based cancer immunotherapy. She is currently leading a product development project internally at Thermo Fisher Scientific in addition to her work on CellFit.
Bachelor of Science in Cell Biology and Master of Science in Biotechnology from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
Hanne Hein Trøen joined SINTEF in 2021. Here she works at the department of…
Hanne Hein Trøen joined SINTEF in 2021. Here she works at the department of Biotechnology and Nanomedicine. Her field of expertise includes inflammation, molecular pathology, and immunology. Hanne focuses on cellular assays and high-throughput screening.
Research Assistant at the Department of Oncology,The Section of Cellular, Therapy, Translational Research Unit Oslo University Hospital
He is currently responsible for in vivo projects at Department of Cellular Therapy to…
He is currently responsible for in vivo projects at Department of Cellular Therapy to monitoring tumor engraftment and treatment effects by use of IVIS platform.
Education:
2016—2018 Master of Food Technology, Norwegian University of Life Science (NMBU), Ås, Norway.
2012 – 2014 Master of Biotechnology, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Hamar,Norway.
1999– 2005 Professional Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine (DVM). Iran
Work experience:
March 2022 – Present Research Engineer, Dept. of Cellular Therapy, OUS-Radiumhospitalet, Oslo, Norway.
Jan 2019- Feb2022 Research Technician at Comparative Medicine Facility in Ullevål hospital,Oslo, Norway.
Postdoctoral research fellow in cell therapy at Oslo University Hospital.
Léa holds a PhD in the field of drug delivery technologies applied to the…
Léa holds a PhD in the field of drug delivery technologies applied to the global health challenge of chronic wound healing.
She has always worked at the interface between research and industry, first with the combination of a Master’s degree in Biotechnology and a work in a company specializing in advanced diagnostic technologies. Then, she joined a startup working on innovative medical devices in order to carry out an industrial PhD contract.
Today, she has integrated the Translational Research Unit in the Cell Therapy team of Else-Marit Inderberg at Oslo University Hospital (OUS) to lend her skills to the world of immunotherapy and cancer research by participating in the CellFit Project.
Sr. Staff Scientist at Thermo Fisher Scientific
Dr. Zynda has been with Thermo Fisher Scientific since 2016. He serves as a Senior Staff Scientist in R&D for…
Dr. Zynda has been with Thermo Fisher Scientific since 2016. He serves as a Senior Staff Scientist in R&D for the department of Cell Culture and Cellular Medicine and has been focused cell therapy process development and product development. He first began studying T cell biology in 2005 at Roswell Park Cancer Institute, where he received a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biophysics and Biochemistry. During his academic years, he elucidated mechanisms by which tumor cells to evade the immune system. He went on to apply this knowledge and skillset toward drug development and cell therapy manufacturing.
Acknowledgments:
The Research Council of Norway
The Research Council of Norway is the national authorities’ key advisor on research policy matters.
The Research Council’s aim is to promote a society where research is created, used and shared, and thus contributes to restructuring and enhanced sustainability.
The CellFitProject is funded by The Research Council of Norway.
Center for Digital Life
The Centre for Digital Life Norway (DLN) is a national centre for biotechnology research, education and innovation.
The centre facilitates transdisciplinary collaboration across institutions, fields of research and the research projects in the centre. The centre is a collaborative project between the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), the University of Oslo (UiO), the University of Bergen (UiB), the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), Oslo University Hospital (OUS), SINTEF and UiT The Arctic University of Norway. The centre is run by a competence hub and includes a research school and research projects. The competence hub is funded by the Research Council of Norway, and the second funding period DLN 2.0 started in February 2021.