Marine Jeanmougin is the new EU advisor in Oslo Cancer Cluster.

A truly European advisor

Woman with long brown hair and white sweater standing in front of concrete wall smiling.Oslo Cancer Cluster

Marine Jeanmougin is the new EU advisor in Oslo Cancer Cluster. She defines herself as truly European.

“People outside Europe think of Europe as one destination. When they take a trip to a European country, they say they are travelling to Europe, and not to France, Germany, or Norway. This has influenced the way I see the continent as well,” said Jeanmougin.

The new EU advisor defines herself as European, and even beyond, as a citizen of the world. She has lived in Norway, Canada, and France, and has family and extended family around the globe.

“The way Europe is connected reinforces the feeling of it being one entity. You can always take a plane or a train for a couple of hours and be back home,” said Marine Jeanmougin.

Building bridges

With a PhD in Applied Mathematics, she knows the academic slopes from various institutions and countries. She has worked as a researcher at the Curie Institute in Paris, and at the Institute for Cancer Research in Oslo. In 2019, she secured a career grant from Helse Sør-Øst and established her own research team at the Department of Molecular Oncology, Oslo University Hospital. Her team is mainly exploring epigenetics heterogeneity in gastrointestinal cancers.

While working as the EU advisor in Oslo Cancer Cluster, she will keep conducting her research activities part-time.

Jeanmougin has a strong interest in building bridges between research and industry, and the EU advisor missions resonate strongly with her professional and personal motivations.

The advantages of the EU

“During the pandemic, and now with the war in Ukraine, it is so important to have one European system that protects us and gives us rights as European citizens, not just as citizens of separate nations,” said Marine Jeanmougin.

Part of what Marine Jeanmougin will do in Oslo Cancer Cluster, is related to these advantages that the EU grants researchers and businesses across its internal- and external borders. She will largely help connect the various actors of cancer research and innovation partners to support them in the development of project proposals under Horizon Europe, the EU’s key funding programme for research and innovation.

If you have EU-related questions, please contact Marine Jeanmougin by email.

Rebekka Rolfsnes will be working at a lab at the Department of Pharmacy during her PhD, but in this photo, she and Pål Rongved are in one of Oslo Cancer Cluster Incubator’s labs.

A PhD on antibiotic resistance

Two people at a lab, one in a white coat.OCC

Rebekka Rolfsnes is doing her PhD with the start-up AdjuTec Pharma AS and the Department of Pharmacy at the University of Oslo (UiO). Together, they will look for solutions to antibiotic resistance.

 

Rebekka Rolfsnes has a Master’s in molecular biology and will be starting her PhD next month. The subject is antibiotic resistance, and more accurately she will study the mechanism of action of one of AdjuTec Pharma’s new compounds, called APC247, on resistant enzymes, bacteria, and off-target effects in human cells. The PhD project is a result of a collaboration between the industry and the university.

Read more about the industry PhD scheme at UiO’s web pages.

A hope to save the world

When asked why she wanted to work with AdjuTec, Rebekka Rolfsnes said:

“Working with a start-up in this field is a unique opportunity to be part of something big all the way from start.”

“Besides, the combination of pharmacy and microbiology is the most intriguing I know,” she added.

Rolfsnes will be writing three articles that will cast new light on the global health problem of antibiotic resistance.

“This is the subject that is closest to my heart because it is a global challenge and there is a hope to save the world. Although it is also a very scary issue,” Rolfsnes admitted.

Win-win relationship

Professor Hanne Cecilie Winther-Larsen at the Department of Pharmacy, UiO, is Rolfsnes’ main PhD supervisor.

“This PhD project will meet one of the largest challenges our society is currently facing, antimicrobial resistance, and we are happy to be a part of it. In the early phase of this project, there are many questions to answer and experiments to perform, which we find scientifically interesting,” said Winther-Larsen.

Woman in lab coat at lab

Professor Hanne Cecilie Winther-Larsen, in the lab at the Department of Pharmacy, UiO.

The Department of Pharmacy offers both competence and the infrastructure to support a successful outcome for the project. Professor Winther-Larsen had no doubt:

“The mutual relationship between the industry and the university creates a win-win situation.”

 

The slow pandemic

Antibiotics are important for treating infections but also for prophylactic use during major surgery, cancer therapy, and for patients vulnerable to infections, such as patients on immunosuppressive drugs and catheterized patients. But after many years of successful treatment of bacterial infections, there has been an alarming increase of infections that are resistant to even last-resort antibiotics.

Pål Rongved, founder, project leader, and CSO in AdjuTec, and professor at UiO, put it this way:

“Antibiotic resistance is the slow pandemic. It is a steadily increasing threat.”

Antibiotic resistance, or antimicrobial multidrug resistance, is due to decades of overuse of antibiotics in agriculture and human medicine, and with few antibiotic innovations. This creates all kinds of problems in hospitals, where the presence of bacteria is high.

5 people in front of a modern building in sunshine

The entire Adjutec Pharma team in front of Oslo Cancer Cluster Innovation Park. From the left: Pål Rongved, Bjørg Bolstad, Ragnar Hovland, Rebekka Rolfsnes and Bjørn Klem.

AdjuTec’s story

AdjuTec’s story started in 2009, when professor Pål Rongved and one of his PhD students at UiO, Alexander Åstrand, found a remarkable effect in their PhD project (which was a collaboration with The University Hospital of Northern Norway and the University of Tromsø).

The effect was this: A chemical compound that could inactivate bacterial resistance enzymes, thus preserving the effect of common antibiotics.

In 2019, Rongved established AdjuTec Pharma to commercialize his invention, which he called the ZinChel technology. The first drug candidate was called APC148 and targets one of two main resistance enzyme families, the metallo-beta-lactamases (MBLs). APC148 is the lead product of AdjuTec in preclinical development, planning for clinical trials in healthy volunteers next year.

AdjuTec has been heavily supported by the Norwegian Research Council (NRC) from the start, and with private investors also on board, the company can now develop its pharmaceutical projects and hire the right people. The company was recently awarded financial support from the City of Oslo, an industry innovation project (IPN) from NRC as well as Eurostars to kick-start the new APC247 preclinical program.

A new drug candidate

During the summer of 2021, AdjuTec designed a new substance that works on a broader spectrum of bacteria compared to APC148. This next-generation compound is called APC247. It is based on a different technology that shows promise in inhibiting both the main resistance families, the prior mentioned MBLs and the serine-beta-lactamases (SBLs).

Both AdjuTec products will be administered intravenously to patients in combination with antibiotics. If successful, and with various regulatory fast tracks, AdjuTec expects that the new drug candidate can be ready for market in five years.

Read more about AdjuTec and their progress on their homepage.