Karin Forsberg Nilsson
The goal of my research is to improve therapy for malignant brain tumors, such as glioblastoma (GBM) and medulloblastoma (MB). GBM is a molecularly heterogeneous and highly aggressive brain tumor, with one of the worst five-year survival rates of all human cancers. Curative therapy for MB, which mainly affects children is better, but for many patients the outcome is still poor.
We have two lines of research. In the first project, we decipher non-coding regulatory regions of cancer genomes to define new candidate genes in brain tumors. Here, we harness a cornerstone of human biology, namely that evolutionary conservation implies function, and use this concept to identify non-coding mutations with regulatory potential. We have shown that mutations in evolutionary constraint positions are functional, and can suggest drug targets in brain tumors.
Secondly, we target the invasive niche, since brain tumors can sculpt the extracellular matrix (ECM) to support cancer progression. Proteoglycans are important components of the brain ECM, and we have shown that their remodeling is part of the malignant brain tumor signature. Current projects therefore aim to target molecules in the proteoglycan biosynthesis or degradation pathways.
My laboratory is situated in the interdisciplinary environment at the Rudbeck Laboratory with close clinical interactions with Uppsala University Hospital.
Group Members
Grzegorz Wicher, docent, researcher
Ananya Roy, Dr, researcher
Lulu Haseeb, MD PhD student
Mattias Belting, visiting professor
Monica Nistér, Professor emerita
Lukas Peltzer, Master’s student