Mohn Cancer Research Laboratory

The Mohn Cancer Research Laboratory was established in Helse Bergen health trust in 2009, with funding provided by Trond Mohn and the Trond Mohn Foundation.

The main issues the laboratory works on are identifying different risks factors linked to cancer and mechanisms that influence cancer treatment. For example, researchers at the centre published their finding in 2011 that they had identified a gene variant that protects against both breast cancer and ovarian cancer – and that 8% of Norway’s population carry this favourable gene variant.

The funding provided by the Foundation helped to establish the centre as a modern, functional cancer research laboratory, where the laboratory work that resulted in the above-mentioned publication was conducted. The centre can conduct analyses of gene mutations as well as epigenetic changes and microRNAs, tissue microarrays, and function testing in the cell laboratories (transfection, as well as siRNA knockdown technology).

‘Many of us have dreamt about this for more than 20 years,’ Professor Per Eystein Lønning said in his speech when the centre opened.