CCBIO Seminar January 29, 2026 – Katrin Kleinmanns

Speaker

Katrin Kleinmanns, CCBIO researcher in the Bjørge and Mc Cormack groups. She will give her talk from her Young Cancer Researcher Award. See also this article in HealthTalk (external link).

Title

Translational PDX models as a platform to advance therapy in ovarian cancer

Chair

Professor Line Bjørge

Place

Auditorium 4, BB-building (external link)

When

January 29, 2026, at 14.30-15.30

No registration necessary. Note that if you are a UiB student and need the ECTS for participation, you need to register in Studentweb for this subject for this term.

Abstract

Despite advances in surgery and first-line targeted therapies, patients diagnosed with the most aggressive and prevalent subtype of epithelial ovarian cancer, high-grade serous ovarian carcinoma (HGSC), experience poor prognosis, with five-year survival rates around 50% and recurrence rates remaining staggeringly high at 75%. Advancing treatment for these patients requires a paradigm shift that integrates novel therapeutic, optimizes cytoreductive surgery, and incorporates molecular tumor profiling. A major obstacle in improving treatment for this group is the lack of biologically relevant models that accurately reflect tumor heterogeneity, the tumor microenvironment (TME), and mechanisms of therapy resistance. This gap has strongly motivated my work. In this talk, I will provide a brief overview of:

• Establishing patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models to preserve patient heterogeneity and the TME
• Identifying CD24 as a biomarker for non-invasive fluorescence imaging and image-guided surgery
• Developing humanized models through co-engraftment of human tumors and immune cells to evaluate immunotherapies in HGSC
• Targeting chemoresistant cancer cells using personalized treatment approaches
• Profiling the TME to identify predictive, prognostic, and response biomarkers