Kristoffer Hellstrand, a professor of tumor immunology at the Sahlgrenska Academy. Hellstrand and his research team have had a blood cancer medication approved in the international pharmaceutical market. NOTE – This article is machine translated from Swedish.
Kristoffer Hellstrand and his research team have been a new drug approved on the international market – a feat which few Swedish scientists have succeeded in doing. But it also took 25 years of assiduous work in developing blood cancer medicine.
He and two co-workers come with long strides from the old work and up to the House on medical student mountain where fled his load just landed. Kristoffer Hellstrand research group is one of the fifteen which now constitute the Sahlgrenska University Cancer Center. Their floor has been completely renovated and given a brand new furniture. With anticipation of the eye showing the areas and the opportunity to plan their trip to a seminar in Denmark while they’re being photographed.
— PhD program is an important part of our work by the Academy and without efforts could we not doctoral candidates get the same quality in research, “says Kristoffer Hellstrand who has his mandate as Vice throughout 2011.
In his own research, he has specialized in NK-cells (natural killer cells) and their ability to attack cancer cells. As a medical doctor and professor of tumor immunology at the Department of clinical virology at the Sahlgrenska Academy in Gothenburg, he sees himself as a freelance in biology and feel privileged when he can work with young students and researchers.
His medications called Ceplene. It is used to prevent relapse in patients with acute myeloid leukemia, AML, the most common form of blood cancer in adults and affects annually 20 000 Europeans. Many patients with AML become free from blood cancer after chemotherapy, but two-thirds may relapse. For them, there is now a drugs, thanks to Hellstrand and his research colleagues.
“We were lucky that came in on a track that worked,” he said humbly.
Previously, bone marrow transplantation is the only treatment for relapse, but it may not all patients get.
— Our treatment increases the chance of being cured with 50-75%, depending on how old the patient is. To enhance the effect, we combine Ceplene with another drug, Proleukin.
The patient can treat themselves and take guns during 18 months. It helps to activate their immune system so that the remaining cancer cells are destroyed. The side effects are moderate, and many can return to work during this period.
Behind Kristoffer Hellstrand new combination therapy is countless research hours that occupied most of his working years.
— 1983 recruited professor Orjan Strannegård me as a graduate student. His major interest in Immunology inspired me.
Already two years later discovered Habeeb to eliminate cultured cancer cells using two substances which enabled the immune system.
— It was a striking effect when we tested the substances in combination. Then we took contact with Mats Brune, a research interest in blood cancer doctor and he came to design all our patient studies of AML. Then they did a larger study that was the basis for the drug.
Thanks to funding from Lai and Söderberg foundations, Kristoffer Hellstrand now test how treatment works on other cancers. He has expanded its research department to the eleven people that analyze blood samples from hematologikliniken at Sahlgrenska University Hospital.
— We learn how cancer cells interact with immune cells and how we can influence the process. Perhaps we could make the immune system than more efficient — that is our goal.
In the välpackade boxes await the advanced equipment, cell sorter, “a revolution for us when we got it thanks to grants from the Lundbergs Research Foundation, and with the latest appropriation can we upgrade it”.
It will take a few days before everything is in place in the specially designed laboratories and working rooms. In Zahri last Office held the entire Department in his corner sofa when they had meetings. Now he gets a small room in the middle of the hallway and wonder where all the paintings will hang. Among the moving boxes are at least fifteen works of art to put color on the third floor, a number of Sten Lindholm and Lenas father Åke Hellstrand . Mr Fredrik Bergh Thorén frowning thoughtfully on the forehead when Kristoffer points to tavelplats in the hallway, where Frederick think a television screen would fit better. The atmosphere is cordial and the conflict resolve the safe. Effective immediately, Hellstrand team have their meetings in the Mediterranean blue coffee room. No couch, but instead place for researchers from many departments in the House. May coffee moments become inspirational.