Department of Oncology-Pathology

Senior Clinical Investigator Award goes to Kenny Rodriguez-Wallberg and Junior Clinical Investigator Award goes to Hildur Helgadottir, both at OnkPat.

The study investigated the addition of pembrolizumab, an anti-PD-1 antibody, to standard preoperative chemotherapy in triple negative breast cancer. Pembrolizumab+chemotherapy led to pathological complete response (pCR, no invasive cancer in the breast or lymph nodes at surgery) in 64,8% of patients, compared with 51,2% in patients treated with placebo+chemotherapy. The combination of pembrolizumab+ chemotherapy was well-tolerated. Extended follow-up is expected to show whether the observed improvement in pCR will translate into better survival. Theodoros Foukakis is the national coordinator of the study in Sweden and Prof Jonas Bergh is a member of the international steering committee for the trial.

In a study published in the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine Sean Rudd at OnkPat with colleagues show that a common and inexpensive drug may be used to counteract treatment resistance in patients with acute myeloid leukemia, one of the most common forms of blood cancer. The researchers will now launch a clinical study to test the new combination treatment in patients.

Johan Hartman has together with Kevin Smith at the Royal Institute of Technology received a large grant of 20 million SEK from MedTechLabs to develop and implement AI-system for clinical breast cancer diagnostics.