CCBIO/CMYC Seminar August 27, 2026 - Stein-Erik Gullaksen
Welcome to the CCBIO seminar series in the fall term of 2026! Open to all in auditorium 4, BBB. No registration necessary. The speaker is Stein-Erik Gullaksen from CCBIO and CMYC, University of Bergen.
Speaker
Stein-Erik Gullaksen
Title
"From single cells to early clinical decisions by precision pharmacodynamics"
Chair
Austin Rayford
Place
Auditorium 4, BB-building (external link)
When
August 27, 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 have registered in Studentweb for this term.
Abstract
There is a fundamental temporal disconnection between the biology of targeted cancer therapy and current response evaluation methods. Targeted drugs alter cancer cells within hours, yet we judge whether the patient responds by assessment of tumour bulk reduction first after weeks or months of treatment, leaving suboptimal and non-responders exposed to ineffective treatments with harmful side effects.
Chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) is an ideal disease to develop novel tools for earlier response evaluation and treament optimization. The disease is driven by a single molecular lesion: a reciprocal translocation that fuses the BCR gene to ABL1, producing a constitutively active tyrosine kinase that drives uncontrolled myeloid proliferation. Although CML is effectively controlled by small-molecule BCR::ABL1 inhibitors (TKIs), most patients face lifelong daily treatment, with side effects that reduce quality of life at substantial socioeconomic cost.
Using mass cytometry, we prospectively profiled single cells from longitudinal peripheral blood of patients starting first-line TKI therapy in two international clinical trials. TKI treatment suppressed intracellular signalling as early as one hour after the first dose, and each drug produced a distinct signalling signature reflecting its kinase-specificity profile. Using these early measurements, machine-learning models predicted 12-month treatment response.
These results show that early single-cell signalling profiling can quantify drug effect within hours rather than months. We will test this prospectively in our SWITCH trial, where we will leverage an early single-cell readout to guide TKI selection in real time, with the aim of securing optimal response while limiting toxicity.
Biosketch
Stein-Erik Gullaksen holds an M.S. in Nanotechnology from the University of Bergen (UiB) and defended his PhD at UiB in 2018, focusing on high-dimensional single-cell analysis of blood samples using mass cytometry. This work was performed under the supervision of Professor Bjørn Tore Gjertsen, and Gullaksen continues this work in his current position as a researcher at the K.G. Jebsen Centre for Myeloid Blood Cancer (CMYC) and the Centre of Cancer Biomarkers (CCBIO).