David Gisselsson Nord, Genomic Medicine Sweden and Lund University, Sweden

David Gisselsson Nord is a clinician-researcher focused on understanding how cancer cells develop resilience against current ontological treatments. He has identified one of the most common mechanisms by which cancer cells alter their genome through repeated breakage of chromosomes with eroded telomeres. Dr. Gisselsson Nord has also established a series of methods for measuring genetic instability of cancer cells that allow better prediction of prognosis and treatment response. Today he divides his time between clinical work as a pediatric pathologist and research on childhood cancer. His combines high-resolution genomics on clinical samples with mathematical modeling and methods from species evolution. By this approach, his team produces detailed maps of how clones replace each other over space and time, with the main purpose to trace the ancestry of metastatic relapse. Dr. Gisselsson Nord and his team recently identified four fundamental evolutionary trajectories by which cancer cells compete with each other and evolve towards a higher degree of malignancy. He has received the Fernström Prize to Promising Young Investigators and a recent SIOP Award for Translational and Basic research from the International Society of Pediatric Oncology.

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