In addition to the Sjöberg Prize, where 9/10 of the prize money is reserved for research purposes, the Sjöberg Foundation has decided in 2024 on grants totalling approximately SEK 172.1 (97.9) million. This sum includes

SEK 75 million for Flagship projects,
SEK 6.2 million to RCC for the development of individual patient follow-up, IPÖ,
SEK 3 million to the Swedish Cancer Society for the nursing initiative “Live well”,
SEK 6 million to the CancerRehabFund for rehabilitation activities, and
SEK 0.9 million to A Non Smoking Generation to support their advocacy activities.

Uppsala university

How can oral health be improved for people with head and neck cancer?

Treatment for head and neck cancer often causes severe side effects and permanent problems, such as difficulty swallowing, pain and reduced saliva production. In two large clinical trials, Ylva Tiblom Ehrsson and Annica Almståhl will now investigate how cancer patients can improve their oral health and quality of life.

Every year, approximately 1,700 people are diagnosed with head and neck cancer. Tumors are usually located in the oral cavity, pharynx or larynx. Thanks to improved treatments, increasing numbers of people survive, but many suffer lasting side effects. These can include inflammation of the oral mucosa, reduced saliva production, pain, difficulty swallowing, caries and changes to taste and smell.

Ylva Tiblom Ehrsson, associate professor at Uppsala University, and Annica Almståhl, associate professor at the University of Gothenburg, will now receive a total of SEK 6 million from the Sjöberg Foundation to investigate whether support for improved oral health can prevent these complications, both during treatment and in the long term.

They will conduct two clinical studies in partnership with several healthcare regions. In one, which is ongoing, patients receive weekly support from a dental hygienist during their cancer treatment. The researchers are studying saliva production and the oral cavity’s microbiome, among other things, to understand how to prevent and alleviate inflammation. In the second study, they will investigate whether patients can benefit from regular support from a dental hygienist for three years after the treatment. The aim is to develop a treatment program that can improve patients’ oral health, their ability to eat and their quality of life.

KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Developing a less harmful way of detecting lung cancer

People who have a high risk of developing lung cancer are currently screened using CT scans. However, the ionizing radiation from CT scans can be harmful in itself. Mats Persson’s research group is developing a method for detecting lung cancer using ultra-low doses of radiation.

The chances of surviving lung cancer are significantly higher if it is detected early. However, the method physicians use to detect changes in the lungs – computed tomography (CT) – exposes people to a relatively high dose of ionizing radiation, which itself increases the risk of cancer. Therefore, to avoid doing more harm than good, physicians need to limit who is screened for lung cancer.

Mats Persson, assistant professor at KTH, is changing this. His research group is investigating whether a new type of X-ray detector, a photon-counting detector, can be used to improve lung cancer screening with computed tomography. It is a significantly more sensitive detector than those currently being used, so can provide clearer images at ultra-low radiation doses.

To improve the image quality from photon-counting computed tomography, the research group is also developing something called deep learning-based image reconstruction. This is a form of AI technology that can filter out the background noise from images, so the details stand out more clearly. The aim is to reduce the radiation dose from CT scans as much as possible, so that people can be safely screened for lung cancer.

Karolinska Institutet

Will study personalized breast cancer treatment

Every year, millions of women receive a drug called tamoxifen to reduce the risk of their breast cancer recurring. However, many patients stop treatment early because of severe side effects. Marike Gabrielson and her colleagues will now investigate whether the dosage of tamoxifen can be personalized, to increase compliance and maximize the effect of the treatment.

Doctors have used tamoxifen to treat hormone-dependent breast cancer for over 50 years. Tamoxifen inhibits the action of estrogen in the body, slowing the tumor’s growth and reducing the risk of the disease recurring. Ideally, women should take tamoxifen for 5-10 years after they have had breast cancer. However, up to half of patients stop treatment early because of its severe side effects, which include menopause-like symptoms, fatigue, brain fog, joint pain and weight gain.

Marike Gabrielson, associate professor at Karolinska Institutet, will now receive SEK 6 million from the Sjöberg Foundation to investigate whether the dosage of tamoxifen can be personalized. Currently, doctors around the world use the same standard dose for all women. Together with some of Sweden’s leading oncologists for breast cancer, Marike Gabrielson will investigate whether women who experience severe side effects and have a high concentration of the drug in their blood can halve their dose of tamoxifen. In parallel, patients with very low levels of the drug in their blood and minor side effects should be allowed to double the dose.

The aim is to make doses of tamoxifen more flexible, so that each woman can get the best possible effect from the drug while minimizing the side effects.

Are temporary stomas necessary after surgery for rectal cancer?

To help the bowel heal, patients who have surgery for rectal cancer are often given a temporary stoma – an opening on the abdomen where the stool is collected in a bag. However, in some cases, a stoma can cause serious complications. Researchers are now conducting a major clinical trial to investigate whether, in some cases, a stoma can do more harm than good.

In rectal cancer, the surgeon often removes a large section of the rectum but saves the anal canal, the part of the rectum closest to the anal opening. The anal canal is then connected to the large bowel. To allow the join between the two parts of the bowel to heal, many patients are given a temporary stoma. Otherwise, there is a risk that stool may start leaking into the abdomen, which can cause serious infections.

However, a stoma can also cause severe complications. Patients may be affected by bowel problems, dehydration, kidney problems and, in some cases, kidney failure. In about one in five patients, the stoma can never be removed and becomes permanent, so the question is whether a stoma does more harm than good.

Sicker patients, who usually heal slowly after surgery, will need a stoma. But what about healthier patients? Josefin Segelman, associate professor and consultant at Ersta Hospital, will now receive SEK 3 million from the Sjöberg Foundation to conduct a clinical trial to answer this question. The project will be conducted in cooperation with physicians in Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

Can an AI analysis of medical records reveal colon cancer?

Incipient colon cancer often has vague symptoms that are easily missed by physicians in primary care. Annika Sjövall is participating in a project that aims to develop a risk algorithm for colon cancer. The idea is that, in the future, a medical record robot will automatically alert physicians if a patient shows signs of colon cancer.

About a quarter of all patients with colon cancer are diagnosed after the cancer cells have already spread and the disease is difficult to cure. When researchers reviewed these patients’ medical records, they found that many of them visited a physician long before being diagnosed with cancer. These patients had relatively common problems, such as diarrhea or constipation, changed bowel habits, abdominal pain, blood in the stool or anemia.

To ensure that colon cancer is detected in good time, Annika Sjövall, associate professor at Karolinska Institutet, together with primary care physicians and researchers from the Regional Cancer Center Stockholm Gotland and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, is developing a risk algorithm to predict the disease. One part of the project is the use of AI to analyze the medical records of 5,000 people who have been diagnosed with colon cancer and compare them with the records of 20,000 matched people, who have never had colon cancer.

Once the researchers have identified the symptoms and diagnoses that best predict colon cancer, they will feed a risk algorithm into a medical record robot that can automatically scan electronic medical records. If the risk algorithm proves capable of precisely identifying people with an increased risk of bowel cancer, they hope it could become a commonly used tool in primary care in Sweden. The Sjöberg Foundation is providing SEK 3 million of funding for the project.

How can aggressive breast cancer be detected in time?

Mammography has reduced breast cancer mortality by 20%. However, it is often discovered between screening sessions, in which case the tumors tend to be more aggressive. Kamila Czene is investigating whether the analysis of mammography images can be improved or supplemented with blood analysis, so more cancer cases can be discovered in time.

In Sweden, women aged 40-74 are called for a mammogram every two years. However, about one third of all women diagnosed with breast cancer discover the tumors between these examinations. This is called interval cancer. In some cases, interval cancer is because the tumor was not detected in the previous mammogram, in other cases because the cancer has developed very quickly. In both cases, tumors tend to be relatively aggressive.

Kamila Czene, professor at Karolinska Institutet, has shown that interval cancer is more aggressive in women who have low breast density, which means their breasts have more fat and less glandular tissue. She will now receive SEK 3 million from the Sjöberg Foundation to develop methods for identifying women with a high risk of interval cancer. She will explore genetic factors that influence the risk of interval cancer and search for biomarkers in the blood that may predict an incipient tumor. She will also use AI to improve the analysis of mammography images so more tumors can be detected in time.

Can treatment via the abdominal cavity increase survival in gastric cancer?

Currently, stomach cancer is difficult to treat once it has spread to the peritoneum. Magnus Nilsson will investigate whether chemotherapy is more effective against this cancer if it is administered directly into the abdominal cavity, rather than only via the blood. He will also explore whether immunotherapies can be administered via the abdominal cavity.

Globally, gastric cancer is the fourth most common cancer. In about half of all patients, the cancer spreads to the peritoneum, the membrane surrounding the organs in the abdomen. These patients receive now chemotherapy, but it has difficulty reaching the peritoneum via the bloodstream. This means that very high doses are necessary, which causes severe side effects.

To improve chemotherapy’s effectiveness, physicians in Asia have started injecting it directly into the abdominal cavity, and many more people are surviving the disease. Magnus Nilsson, professor at Karolinska Institutet, is now receiving SEK 6 million from the Sjöberg Foundation for a clinical study in which he and his colleagues are investigating whether this innovative treatment works equally well on people of European origin.

Nilsson will also investigate whether chemotherapy can increase the chances of immunotherapies being able to eradicate stomach tumors and whether this treatment can also be given via the abdominal cavity. In animal models, immunotherapies have been more effective than when they have been delivered via the bloodstream.

Early detection of blood cancer relapses will increase survival rates

Almost a third of people treated with stem cell transplants for myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a form of blood cancer, suffer a relapse. Magnus Tobiasson’s research group has developed a technique for detecting relapses at an earlier stage . He and his colleagues are now investigating whether treating these recurrences early can increase survival rates.

Using a new and sensitive method called digital droplet PCR (ddPCR), researchers can detect minute amounts of cancer cells in the blood. Magnus Tobiasson, associate professor at Karolinska Institutet, and his colleagues have further developed the method so it can be used to predict an incipient recurrence, following stem cell transplantation for MDS. In a previous study, the researchers showed that using ddPCR allowed them to detect a relapse 71 days before it can be detected by routine clinical methods, on average.

Magnus Tobiasson, along with physicians at selected transplant centers around Scandinavia, is now conducting a new clinical study. They follow up patients who received a stem cell transplantation for MDS using ddPCR. If cancer cells are detected in a patient’s blood, they receive treatment. The hope is that early intervention will help more people survive a relapse. The Sjöberg Foundation is providing SEK 6 million in funding.

Gothenburg University

Can immunosuppressive drugs alleviate bowel problems due to radiotherapy?

Radiation for pelvic cancer often leads to long-term bowel problems. Cecilia Bull’s research group has shown that lingering inflammation in the bowel may contribute to failures to recover from radiotherapy. She will now study this inflammation in detail and explore whether it can be treated with the same drugs used for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

In cases of cancer, radiation is often necessary to save lives but, when radiation targets the pelvic area, the bowel is often damaged. As a result, many people experience chronic bowel problems, such as recurrent diarrhea or problems with leaking stools.

To understand why the bowel does not heal properly after radiotherapy, Cecilia Bull, associate professor at the University of Gothenburg, has mapped bowel tissue from affected people. She and her research group have discovered that the bowel’s protective mucus barrier is weakened, allowing bacteria to penetrate the bowel wall, which has become chronically inflamed. Some of these changes are similar to those in people with IBD and may partly explain why the bowel does not heal.

Cecilia Bull will now receive SEK 6 million from the Sjöberg Foundation to continue to make detailed studies of inflammation in radiation-damaged bowels. She will draw on physicians’ existing knowledge about IBD. One of the main objectives is to evaluate whether some immunosuppressive drugs used against IBD can also help people who received radiation therapy and now have bowel problems.

Can anti-inflammatory substances in carrots prevent cancer?

Based on animal studies, researchers have shown that specific substances in some older types of carrots, falcarinol and falcarindiol, have an inhibitory effect on colon cancer. Thomas de Lange will now lead the Swedish part of a clinical trial that is evaluating whether carrot juice, which is particularly rich in these substances, can influence the development of colorectal cancer and its precursors.

Previously, researchers have linked a high consumption of carrots to a lower risk of colorectal cancer. Initially, they thought that this was due to beta-carotene, the substance that makes carrots orange. However, Thomas de Lange, a senior consultant and associate professor at the University of Gothenburg, and his colleagues at the University of Odense have discovered this is not the case. Instead, they have shown that two anti-inflammatory substances in carrots, falcarinol and falcarindiol, can inhibit the development of cancer cells.

To take this research a step further, Thomas de Lange will now receive SEK 6 million from the Sjöberg Foundation. Along with colleagues in Odense, Stockholm and Uppsala, he will test falcarinol and falcarindiol’s efficacy in a large clinical trial.

Four hundred people who received treatment for polyps, which are advanced colorectal cancer precursors, will be randomly assigned to two different groups. One group will drink 100 ml of falcarinol- and falcarindiol-rich carrot juice every day. The other group will be given a placebo juice to drink. The aim is to see whether the juice can prevent the development of colorectal cancer and its precursors.

Can immunostimulants increase survival rates in pancreatic cancer?

Most people who undergo surgery for pancreatic cancer have a relapse within 1-2 years. One reason may be that the surgery somehow weakens the body’s immune system. Anna Martner, a professor at the University of Gothenburg, will now investigate whether a drug treatment that activates the immune system can prevent pancreatic cancer recurring.

If detected early, pancreatic cancer is often operable, but unfortunately it frequently returns within 1-2 years. Anna Martner and her colleagues have discovered that the most common type of surgery for pancreatic cancer, pancreaticoduodenectomy, negatively affects the immune system, which may contribute to a relapse occurring. After surgery, immune-suppressing cells called myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) accumulate in the blood. These produce oxygen radicals that inhibit the body’s tumor-killing immune cells (natural killer cells and T cells).

The good news is that a drug called histamine dihydrochloride (HDC) can reduce the production of oxygen radicals and the amount of MDSC in the blood. Clinics use it in combination with IL-2, a substance that activates the killer cells, to prevent the recurrence of a specific type of blood cancer.

Anna Martner will now receive SEK 3 million from the Sjöberg Foundation to investigate whether combining HDC and IL-2 can also prevent the recurrence of pancreatic cancer. Initially, 14 adult patients undergoing surgery for pancreatic cancer will be trialing this treatment. If the treatment is safe and shows signs of efficacy, the study will be expanded to 50 patients.

How can prostate cancer screening be more accurate?

Elevated PSA levels in the blood may be an early indicator of prostate cancer. However, many men have tumors that grow slowly and do not really need treatment. Jonas Hugosson is developing methods that are better at differentiating between different forms of prostate cancer, so men are less likely to receive unnecessary cancer diagnoses and treatments.

Prostate cancer is the leading cause of death from cancer in men. Population-based screening for the disease could therefore save many lives, but the problem is that the screening test used to find prostate cancer – the PSA test – sounds an alarm for all tumors, even the ones that will never cause problems. As a result, many men receive an unnecessary cancer diagnosis.

Jonas Hugosson, a professor at the University of Gothenburg, will now receive a grant of SEK 6 million from the Sjöberg Foundation for discovering methods that can better identify fast-growing prostate tumors. Together with his team, he is running two large clinical trials to investigate the effect of screening for prostate cancer. In one, which started in 1995, the researchers are investigating the long-term impact of PSA testing on disease progression and mortality in men. In the second, they are investigating whether a PSA test can be supplemented by a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan to improve its accuracy. Initial data show that this can halve the number of unnecessary prostate cancer diagnoses.

Jonas Hugosson’s research team will also investigate whether an AI analysis of magnetic resonance images can improve diagnostics and whether new blood markers can complement the PSA test.

Developing new cell therapies to combat hard-to-treat cancer

Various forms of immunotherapy have revolutionized cancer care, but there are many patients for whom these treatments do not work. Jonas Nilsson will now receive his third major grant from the Sjöberg Foundation, so he can continue to develop new forms of cell therapies that can combat difficult-to-treat malignant melanoma and liver metastases from gastrointestinal cancer .

Jonas Nilsson, professor at the University of Gothenburg, has previously received two large grants from the Sjöberg Foundation. With the first grant, he developed advanced animal models – avatar mice – that can be used to test the efficacy of cell therapies against cancer. With the help of the second grant, his research team developed two new forms of cell therapy. One is based on CAR-T cells, where patients’ immune cells are genetically modified so they can recognize and bind to cancer cells. Jonas Nilsson’s research group further developed this treatment, so that CAR-T cells could attack solid tumors in avatar mice.

The second treatment developed by the research group has been tested in a pilot clinical trial. Doctors isolate special immune cells, tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), from the liver metastases of malignant melanoma. They grow these cells in a laboratory and reintroduce them into the patients’ livers. The immune cells can then control the metastases, but it is too early to say what the long-term effect of the treatment will be.

Jonas Nilsson will now receive an additional SEK 6 million from the Sjöberg Foundation to continue developing and improving treatments with TILs and CAR-T cells. He will also explore whether tumor reactive lymphocytes (TRLs) can be used as cell therapy.

Screening for gynecologic cancer will save more lives

When tumor cells die, they release small fragments of DNA. Karin Sundfeldt’s research group is utilizing this to develop a screening test that can detect DNA fragments from incipient ovarian or uterine cancer. The aim is that this test will supplement the cervical cancer screening that women already undergo.

Frequently, ovarian cancer only shows symptoms after the tumor has already spread, which is why it has a high mortality rate. If cancer cells could be detected at an early stage of the disease, theoretically more than 90% of patients could survive.

This is why Karin Sundfeldt, a professor at the University of Gothenburg, is developing a screening test for ovarian and uterine cancer. The test builds upon the fact that tumors release tumor-specific DNA when they renew their cells. Karin Sundfeldt’s research group has shown that this cell-free tumor DNA can be isolated from the samples that women already provide through the established screening process for cervical cancer.

With the help of a previous grant from the Sjöberg Foundation, Karin Sundfeldt developed a clinical test that can identify DNA fragments originating from gynecologic tumors. She will now receive an additional SEK 6 million for a pilot study to ensure that the test really does work. The aim is to start a large clinical trial within a year or so, to examine whether the test can work as part of a real-life screening program for gynecologic cancer.

Lund University

Bladder cancer treatment will be more personalised

Researchers at Lund University have developed a new classification system for bladder cancer to improve the disease’s treatment. They are now investigating how this system can be used to determine in advance which patients need more aggressive treatment, as well as for choosing the correct additional treatment after bladder cancer surgery.

Mortality rates have decreased for many cancers thanks to improved treatments but, until recently, progress had almost stalled for bladder cancer. One reason is that physicians have had difficulties foreseeing responses to the available treatments. However, by analyzing all the genes expressed by the cancer cells, the Lund bladder cancer group and Fredrik Liedberg, professor at Lund University, have succeeded in dividing bladder cancer into five subtypes. This can help predict how aggressive the cancer is and how it will respond to different treatments.

Fredrik Liedberg will now receive SEK 6 million from the Sjöberg Foundation for various clinical studies to investigate how this new classification system can be used to optimize bladder cancer treatments. In some cases, the entire bladder must be removed. In other cases only the tumor is removed and then the bladder is rinsed with chemotherapies and other drugs to decrease the risk of local recurrence. The aims include discovering which chemotherapies work best for the various subtypes of bladder cancer, so that patients can immediately receive the drug or treatment most likely to help them.

A single breath could reveal non-small cell lung cancer

Lung cancer is currently detected using computed tomography (CT), a technique that has limitations. Sandra Lindstedt is developing a simpler method. She has shown that exhalations from people with non-small cell lung cancer contain unique proteins, which can be detected using a technique called mass spectrometry.

If more people are to survive lung cancer, it is important that tumors are detected earlier. Researchers are therefore investigating whether high-risk patients can be screened using CT scans, but this technique is resource-intensive and often misses smaller tumors.

Sandra Lindstedt, a professor at Lund University, has previously received a grant from the Sjöberg Foundation to investigate whether lung cancer can be detected by analyzing exhaled breath. An exhalation contains tiny particles that originate in lung tissue, called exhaled breath particles (EBP). The research group has shown that people with non-small cell lung cancer – the most common type of lung tumor – have a unique pattern of proteins in their exhalations.

To help take this discovery further, Sandra Lindstedt will now receive an additional SEK 3 million from the Sjöberg Foundation. Her research group will develop a clinically viable test and then analyze samples from patients with suspected lung cancer. The aim is to investigate whether the test is as accurate as current diagnostic methods. If this works well, it could provide a faster, cheaper and safer way to detect lung cancer.

Grants 2024