The Odense University Hospital (OUH) is in the middle of a physical fusion with the Odense campus of the University of Southern Denmark (SDU). Thereby, the strong fundamental biomedical research environment at the Faculty of Science will become neighbour to its clinical counterpart at the Faculty of Health Sciences.
This setting has the potential to skyrocket biomedical research in Odense. The Translational Cancer Hub will be the framework that fulfills this potential in the cancer area.
By having basic and clinical researchers in the immediate vicinity, the path from exploring the relevance of a fundamental laboratory finding in a clinical setting will drastically shorten. Viceversa, a local community of basic scientists can aid their clinical colleagues in unraveling knowledge of patient-relevant samples. Both improve the prospects for developing and testing novel treatment regimes.
The cancer research community in Odense has for years prepared for the fusion of OUH and SDU. By having established a solid network and organized cancer symposia with national and international speakers, the fundamental and clinical cancer scientists are ready to pave a new and fruitful way for cancer research in Odense in the framework of the Translational Cancer Hub.
Translational Cancer Hub
The aim of the hub is to create a national and international beacon within cancer research by fostering highly interdisciplinary research between basic and clinical scientists. The programme will focus on translational aspects and mainly endorse projects that can improve the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer.
The Translational Cancer Hub involves clinical scientists from all disciplines (e.g. nutrition, epidemiology, surgery, medical and radiation oncology, radiology and pathology) and basic scientists at SDU (e.g. pharmacologists, biochemists, cancer biologists etc.) to support existing as well as initiate and conduct new multidisciplinary projects of the highest impact.
We also envision that such a research environment will be highly attractive to undergraduate students within biomedicine and medicine, PhD students as well as postdoctoral fellows, and we foresee that the programme will foster new research careers for young and talented junior cancer scientists.
Members of the Translational Cancer Hub
Several researchers from the Faculty of Science and Faculty of Health Sciences are already engaged in Translational Cancer Hub. Their minds are the fundamental ressource in the hub.
