Dr Ragnar Mørk’s Prize for Excellent Cancer Research 2025 awarded to Sigrid Skånland
The 2025 Dr Ragnar Mørk Legacy Prize is awarded to Sigrid Skånland of the Department of Cancer Immunology, Institute for Cancer Research, for her ground-breaking research on leukemia therapy. The personal award of 200 000 NOK was presented at a ceremony at the Radium Hospital on the 21st of November, where Sigrid Skånland delivered her prize lecture.
Skånland leads a project on functional precision medicine for hematologic cancers, with a particular focus on chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Her team performs functional analyses directly on patient samples – including drug sensitivity screening and single cell signaling analyses - to identify biomarker signatures that can predict treatment response and help guide clinical decisions.
“I am very thankful to be awarded this prize, and to everyone who contributes tomoving the research forward!”, says Skånland.
About Sigrid Skånland
Sigrid Skånland holds a PhD from the University of Oslo (2009) and completed a long-term EMBO postdoctoral fellowship at the University Hospital Frankfurt,Germany (2009-2011). Since 2011 she has been affiliated with Prof Kjetil Taskén’s research group, where she has established and leads a project team focusing on functional precision medicine in hematologic cancers (from 2021). In 2022, Skånland spent six months as a visiting researcher at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. In the period 2022-2025, she has also been a researcher in the Norwegian Centre for Clinical Cancer Research (MATRIX). Moreover, she coordinated the ERA PerMed consortium CCL-CLUE, which worked on tailoring targeted treatments for CLL, and she currently coordinates the follow-up EP PerMed consortium CLL-OUTCOME. In 2023, Sigrid Skånland was named “Researcher of the Year”at the Institute for Cancer Research.
About Dr Ragnar Mørk’s Legacy Prize:
The Dr Ragnar Mørk’s Prize for Excellent Cancer Research has been awarded annually since 2001 to researchers at the Norwegian Radium Hospital who have achieved outstanding research results. The prize is funded by a foundation established in memory of pharmacist Ragnar Mørk.
Links:
Sigrid Skånland: OUH - Sigrid Skånland
Sigrid Skånland's project group: OUH - Functional precision medicine for haematological cancers
Department of Cancer Immunology: OUH - Dept. of Cancer Immunology
Institute for Cancer Research: OUH - Institute for Cancer Research
