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Stiftelsen Assar Gabrielssons Fond annually awards, according to its regulations, "two grants for large projects, preferably one for preclinical cancer research and one for clinical cancer research". After discussion, a group of three higher quality projects (in alphabetical order): Martin Dalin, Carolina Guibentif and Lisa Tuomi, all researching at the University of Gothenburg, received each a grant by 600 000 SEK.
Project title: Personalized analysis of circulating tumor DNA: A non-invasive guide to treatment decisions in childhood cancer
Reliable tumour markers detectable in the blood are not available in the majority of pediatric cancers today. The purpose of this project is to develop and test personalized analysis of circulating tumour DNA as a marker for treatment response and relapse of disease in childhood malignancies.
Project title: Single-Cell Genomics of Human Development - towards in vitro preclinical models of childhood cancer
Half of all childhood cancers have a suspected prenatal origin, limiting access to the cancer‐initiating developmental progenitor, thus hindering the study the molecular mechanisms underlying transformation. The overall goal of this proposal is to take advantage of human pluripotent stem cell differentiation to model in vitro the prenatal events leading to childhood malignancies, and to streamline the identification of underlying mechanisms and of novel treatments.
Modelling the onset of childhood malignancies in vitro will require a precise mapping of the multiple molecular processes leading to hematopoietic lineages during hPSC differentiation. My proposal harnesses single‐cell profiling to address these issues through the following specific goals:
Project title: Improved jaw opening and swallowing function in patients with head and neck cancer following preventive exercise: a randomized study
Difficulties to open the jaw (trismus) or to swallow (dysphagia) affects ~50% of the >1600 patients annually diagnosed with head and neck cancer (HNC) in Sweden. Extensive and high-quality studies of how preventive exercise can reduce or inhibit those debilitating dysfunctions are lacking. The purpose of this randomized intervention study is to determine: 1. If simplified structured prehabilitation, i.e. preventive exercise programs improve swallowing and jaw-opening function and health-related quality of life in HNC patients. 2. If the proposed prehabilitation intervention is cost-effective from a health-economic perspective.
The goal is to improve jaw-opening, swallowing function and health-related quality of life and to reduce health-care costs this care-requiring patient group.