About CCBIO

Centre Director:
Professor Dr.Med Lars A. Akslen
Phone: + 47 55 97 31 82
e-mail: lars.akslen@uib.no

Administrative Leader:
Geir Olav Løken
Phone: + 47 55 58 54 36
e-mail: geir.loken@uib.no

CCBIO Research School Leader:
Erlig Høivik
e-mail: erling.hoivik@uib.no

CCBIO Research School administration:
e-mail: studie.kliniskmedisin@uib.no

Communications Adviser:
Marion Solheim
Phone:  +47 55 58 39 09 or +47 991 52 821
e-mail: Marion.Solheim@uib.no

Web and newsletters editor:
Eli Synnøve Vidhammer
e-mail: Eli.Vidhammer@uib.no

The Principal Investigators:

• Lars A. Akslen
• Bjørn Tore Gjertsen
• Donald Gullberg
• Karl Henning Kalland
• James Lorens
• Oddbjørn Straume
• Emmet Mc Cormack
• Roger Strand
• Line Bjørge
• Daniela Elena Costea
• John Cairns
• Camilla Krakstad
• Elisabeth Wik, Erling A. Hoivik
• Agnete Engelsen
• Carina Strell

Postal address (letters): 
Universitetet i Bergen
(name of person to receive)
CCBIO, Klinisk Institutt 1
Jonas Lies vei 87
5021 Bergen

Goods address: 
Universitetet i Bergen
(name of person to receive)
CCBIO, Klinisk Institutt 1
Jonas Lies vei 91 B
5021 Bergen

Visiting address: 
Centre for Cancer Biomarkers CCBIO
Sentralblokka 2nd floor (hospital main building)
Haukeland University Hospital
5021 Bergen
Norway

CCBIO is organized across seven departments and four faculties at the University of Bergen. Its main activities, with PIs, AIs and most of the other staff and equipment, are located at the Faculty of Medicine’s Department of Clinical Medicine (CCBIO’s host department), Department of Clinical Science, and Department of Biomedicine. CCBIO also has activity and staff at the Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities, the Departments of Global Public Health and Primary Care, Economics, and Informatics, as well as at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Haukeland University Hospital is an important collaborator with contributions towards CCBIO both in terms of staff, facilities, such as the Clinical Trials Unit, advanced equipment, and available biobanks.

Research management

In terms of science management, CCBIO is organized in four integrated research programs with associated teams (basic studies, biomarker studies, clinical studies, and societal studies), all supported by bioinformatics resources. Lab space and advanced core facilities are available for CCBIO, as is the Clinical Trials Unit at Haukeland University Hospital. The investigators meet monthly to discuss scientific and administrative issues and update each other on development and progress, and they also gather for a lunch-to-lunch strategy seminar bi-annually. The monthly meetings and the bi-annual strategy seminars are important platforms for communication and for the increasing collaboration and consolidation within CCBIO.

Management group

In 2023–24, CCBIO was managed by the director, Lars A. Akslen, the co-director Line Bjørge, and the administrative leader, Geir Olav Løken. The management was advised and assisted by the web- and newsletter editor (Eli S. Vidhammer), an economy coordinator (Mildrid B. Høgås), a PhD coordinator (Kjetil Harkestad), finance officers, the faculty communications officers and other administrative staff allocated to CCBIO in parts of their positions. CCBIO’s head office (the “CCBIO-HQ”) is located on the second floor of Haukeland University Hospital’s main building. 

Integration with the host institution and administrative support

In terms of administrative support, CCBIO aims to use its funds as efficiently as possible towards its research aims, while also ensuring excellent administrative services for its researchers and a good climate for collaboration with its departmental and institutional partners. Consequently, CCBIO is organized as a matrix structure to retain full control over resources while the day-to-day administration is delegated to the involved departments and administrative support units.

As a main principle, funds and positions are located at the respective department where the research and teaching activities take place. This enables researchers to interact with their familiar support staff, thereby minimizing resources used on day-to-day administration. In addition, it reduces CCBIO’s vulnerability and creates common interests between CCBIO and its departments. This model has proven successful due to its efficiency and robustness
and has ensured excellent collaborative relations. During its continuation phase, CCBIO aims to remain organized in much the same manner.

CCBIO is established by the Research Council of Norway in collaboration with the University of Bergen for a 10-year period as Centre of Excellence from autumn 2013 to autumn 2023. Other important sources of financial support are Helse Vest and the Norwegian Cancer Society. From 2024, CCBIO continues with funding from the University of Bergen (central level) and several sources of external funding.

Get a full overview of the CCBIO activities in our annual reports!

CCBIO in Brief 2024: A brief history of the Centre for Cancer Biomarkers CCBIO 2013-2024, including activities 2023-2024: Exists in book version, ask for a printed book from geir.loken@uib.no. For a link, please use this, but allow some minutes to load, as it is a large document with 370 pages: CCBIO in Brief as PDF.

2022: Link to 2022 report as PDF

2021: Link to 2021 report as PDF

2020: Link to 2020 report as PDF

2019: Link to 2019 report as PDF

2018: Link to 2018 report as PDF

2017: Link to 2017 report as PDF

2016: Link to 2016 report as PDF

2015: Link to 2015 report as PDF

2014: Link to 2014 report as PDF

2013: Link to 2013 report as PDF

CCBIO started issuing a newsletter to the extended CCBIO family in September 2014. The newsletter has a focus on news and events at CCBIO and other matters of relevance for CCBIO. In combination with the CCBIO website ccbio.no, the newsletter, supplemented by round-mails, is CCBIO's preferred means of distributing information.

If you wish to receive CCBIO's newsletter each time we issue a new one, and be informed when CCBIO issues invitations to events, please send an e-mail to eli.vidhammer@uib.no and ask to be added to the mailing list.

See the CCBIO Newsletters on this link.

See an overview of news stories involving CCBIO members/research groups through the years.

CCBIO in the Media.

CCBIO has access, through our mother department the Department of Clinical Medicine, a new Laser Microdissection System which is available in our research environment. This enables the user to isolate areas of tissue, or even single cells, from FFPE (formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded) or frozen tissue sections. The LMD7 comes with a high-quality Leica microscope and camera, and allows for either brightfield or fluorescent imaging.

Laser-microdissected tissue is very suitable for downstream genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic or metabolomic analyses.

Key features:

• High-quality Leica microscope

• High powered laser (cuts through almost “everything”)

• Gravity-assisted tissue isolation

• Four air-objectives with 5x, 10x, 40x and 63x magnification

• Fluorescence filters (RGB and Cy5)

• Several different collection alternatives (tube caps, 96-well plates, 8/12-tube strips)

• User-friendly software

The Leica LMD7 is located at the Department of Pathology, 2nd floor, Sentralblokken, Haukeland University Hospital, room 5322 (AV-room). The LMD7 is owned by Department of Clinical Medicine (K1). The following have contributed to the purchase: Faculty of Medicine, Pancreas Research Group (Anders Molven), Tumor Biology Research Group (Lars A. Akslen), Neuromics lab (Charalampos Tzoulis), Renal Research Group (Hans-Peter Marti). For booking, go to the MIC booking system. First-time users are required to book a training session. Low cost for use (50 NOK/h), plus minimum 2 hours of supervised use (450 NOK/h) for new users. Superusers/instructors are Kenneth Finne, Tariq Osman and Irene Flønes.

The University of Bergen implemented in February 2019 the Hyperion Imaging System, next generation immunohistochemistry, where researchers can explore tissue biology with at least 35 antibodies simultaneously. This instrument is open for booking for all researchers.

CCBIO is the formal owner of the analyzer. Many partners are behind this, and in addition to CCBIO, the Faculty of Medicine and the Bergen Research Foundation (BFS) have contributed financially. Access to the equipment is managed and operated by the Flow Cytometry Core Facility. This multiplexing tissue analyzer is available for use by both national and international researchers. 

2 modules

The Hyperion Imaging platform is combining two modules: the Hyperion Tissue Imager and a Helios CyTOF® system. The Helios/Hyperion system use metal tagged antibodies towards specific proteins of interest in select regions of fixed tissue sections, frozen tissue sections, cell smears or cell suspensions.

This technology utilize a state-of-the-art Time-of-Flight Inductively Coupled Plasma mass spectrometry technology together with elemental tags that have higher molecular weights than those elements that are naturally abundant in biological systems.

The advantage with using mass cytometry on cells in suspension is that it does not produce the same overlap as when using fluorochromes in flow cytometry, and thus there is little need for compensation. No fluorescence background also makes this technology very suitable for looking at high dimensional functional and phenotypic correlations at single cell level, accelerating biomarker findings and developing targeted drug therapy (precision medicine).

The Hyperion image system (HIS) provides a visual context to the heterogeneity of tissue microenvironments we have not been able to do before. This is possible because of the up to 37 metal tags used to simultaneously detect multiple proteins on one tissue section, which allow for understanding of protein behaviors and interactions to drive biological breakthroughs and define clinical biomarkers.

Or very short said, consider it a "google map for tumors”!

Get into dialogue with us in the planning phase

It is crucial that the technical support staff operating the instrument is contacted well before the experiments to help you and your group in the planning phase.

Poorly planned experiments on HIS can be very costly, and experience dictates that preparing your projects well in advance is important and avoids unnecessary use of resources. Brith Bergum and Jørn Skavland, the chief engineers operating HIS, have accumulated lots of experience on experimental design and know what the instrument is capable of and which issues that typically arise. They also know which application specialists and other researchers with similar projects to contact to discuss your experiments.

Also, sharing your experiences with Brith and Jørn in retrospect is advisable as they can ensure that your experiences are carried on to other users, often within the same group or among your collaborators. To this end, they also arrange meetings on Hyperion and Helios experiments on Fridays in room 7.1 at the 7th floor in the lab building at 13.00, during which users can present, discuss and share their experiments and experiences. Please contact Jørn or Brith if you want to be on the email list for the meetings.

The core facility has 10 antibodies for Hyperion in its reagent repository; these antibodies can be purchased in small aliquots. This will allow researchers and groups to more easily test imaging mass cytometry on their own samples without having to purchase larger aliquots.

We therefore encourage you, and those from your group who will be hands on with HIS experiments, to contact Brith Bergum and Jørn Skavland as early in the planning as possible.

Research possibilities

For more information on research possibilities, use this link.

Technical details

You can find technical details in this link.

Practical details

Location

The Hyperion image mass cytometer is located at the 5th floor in the laboratory building, in the Flow Cytometry Core Facility.

Access

General information about access to the facility is available here: https://w ww.uib.no/en/clin2/flow

If you have an account in the booking system and need to ask for access to the machine, go to “Instruments” under “My profile” in Idea Elan. Here, find the Hyperion and ask for access.

If you have never used the core facility or the instruments, both PI and relevant group members have to set up a profile here: https://secure5.ideaelan.com/Bergen/Public/AppLogin.aspx
The PI is required to set up a “Lab” in the system and tie his or her students/researchers to this lab, and add accounts for billing.

Price

The price per first two hours for non commercial users (UiB, UoH-sector & health services):
Supervised 1500 NOK/hr
Unsupervised 1100 NOK/hr

From the third hour within a single experiment: 600 NOK per hour. 

Service

The core staff will primarily do the setup of the Hyperion, QC and setup of slides. This will be supervised use. The acquisition of the samples will be unsupervised use.

Anyone who wishes to use the machine are required to contact the core staff before booking the machine, to discuss the specific details around the experiment and make a plan with the operator for running of samples. Contact: Brith Bergum brith.bergum@uib.no and Jørn Skavland Jorn.Skavland@uib.no

Preparations

Please contact the core facility staff also in the planning phase of the experiment, they can provide very useful tips. You are also welcome to contact our Hyperion representatives from the producer, Fluidigm. They have valuable experience to share. Contact information can be provided by Brith and Jørn.