New co-workers in U-CAN

During the summer a new study was published in Nature Communications where samples from nearly 1500 patients, representing 12 different forms of cancer, from the U-CANs sample collection were used. The aim of the study was to use an extremely sensitive method combined with AI to identify how the expression of over 1400 proteins in blood samples from patients with different forms of cancer differed from each other. The study's findings show that it is possible distinguish different forms of cancer from each other with great precision based on the expression of "protein-panels" in blood, and that in many instances these panels can furthermore distinguish healthy blood samples from diseased blood samples, demonstrating the potential and usefulness of this approach for future diagnostics and cancer screening.

I maj 2023 välkomnade U-CAN-projektet sin senaste diagnosgrupp: Levermetastaser. Gruppen fokuserar på att inkludera patienter som drabbats av levermetastaser oavsett ursprunglig cancerform.

On the first of December 2022, two new diagnostic areas were started in U-CAN: kidney cancer and testicular cancer. These are thus the 14th and the 15th diagnostic areas to join the U-CAN-project.

On the 17th of November U-CAN celebrated 12 years of successful operation.

Under 2022-2023 kan forskare ansöka om stöd för att bedriva forskning baserat på U-CAN material.

U-CAN launches a new and improved website with several new pages and much more useful information for the website's visitors.

In April 2021 the thirteenth diagnosis area within U-CAN was formed: Liver-, bile duct- and pancreatic cancer. These forms of cancer usually have a very poor prognosis and U-CAN therefore hopes to contribute to continued research for improved survival and individualized medicine by initiating this new collection of samples and data.

Because of Covid-19, the planned activities to highlight that U-CAN has been in operation for 10 years are cancelled until further notice.

U-CAN in Umeå and local collaborators will host the 5th Swedish Cancer Research Meeting in Umeå 3-4 October 2019. This is a national meeting organized by the strategic research areas for cancer; U-CAN, StratCan and BioCARE.

To support researchers who wish to use material from the sample collection U-CAN has published a white paper for study design.

The U-CAN sample collection experiences great interest from researchers and the number of research applications submitted to U-CAN in 2017 has surpassed previous years.

Statistics describing the collection of blood samples from patients included in U-CAN at the hospitals in Karlstad and Gävle are now available at the website.

As of 1 July 2017, U-CAN also collects samples from patients with cancer in the esophagus or stomach.

The paper describes U-CAN’s sample collection and organisation, and the value of the U-CAN material for cancer research. The close collaboration between participating universities and hospitals is emphasized as an important factor behind the successful collection of samples from cancer patients before, during and after therapy.

In the spring 2017 U-CAN opened a call for applications for salary support for PhD students or post docs working in projects that use U-CAN material. Four applications were granted support for periods between two and four years.

At the end of 2017, more than 15.000 patients had consented to participate in U-CAN since the start of the sample collection in 2010.

The foundation Mats Paulssons stiftelse has decided to continue supporting the collaborations between U-CAN in Uppsala and SCAN-B in Lund. The support will also increase from one to two million SEK.

U-CAN has recently joined the European infrastructure for translational research, EATRIS, which has already resulted in a joint EUROSTARS application in the lymphoma field, with the companies ExBiome and ExScale

Per-Henrik Edqvist has been working as U-CAN’s new project coordinator for a few weeks now. His responsibilities include financial and scientific reporting, handling of collaboration contracts and contacts with U-CAN affiliated staff.