Sven wants to crack cancer codes
Cancer researcher Sven Nelander was recently recruited to SciLifeLab. He comes from Gothenburg University. – This is really great, and I have high hopes.
– Much has been done here to bring together clinical and basic cancer research, and we see great potential in gaining access to the infrastructure that’s in place at SciLifeLab, says Sven Nelander.
With a background as a mathematician and medical researcher, today he is developing mathematical models of cancer cells. The models are used as a new interpretive tool that will make it easier to understand how mutations conspire to cause cancer.
– A single tumour can contain hundreds of genetic and other molecular changes. This means that it can be hard in general to understand the measurements we extract from tumour biobanks today. Interpreting such measurements are a bit like cracking a code. This is where I believe mathematical and statistical models can be useful. In the long term we hope this can lead to new therapies and targeted cancer treatments, says Sven.
Sven Nelander’s team is focusing on tumours in the nervous system, including the brain tumour glioblastoma, which afflicts more than 10 000 people in Europe each year.
– Median survival for a gliobastoma patient is just one year, and there is no effective treatment. So this is an important clinical problem where new approaches may be useful. Today there are more and more powerful experimental tools and huge volumes of measurements to study.
Susanna Eriksson