The public defence will be held as a video conference over Zoom.
The defence will follow regular procedure as far as possible, hence it will be open to the public and the audience can ask ex auditorio questions when invited to do so.
Click here to participate in the public defence
Due to copyright reasons, an electronic copy of the thesis must be ordered from the faculty. In order for the faculty to have time to process the order, it must be received by the faculty no later than 2 days prior to the public defence. Orders received later than 2 days before the defence will not be processed. Inquiries regarding the thesis after the public defence must be addressed to the candidate.
Digital Trial Lecture – time and place
Adjudication committee
- First opponent: Professor Alain Zeimet, University Hospital Innsbruck, Austria
- Second opponent: Associate Professor Esther Moss, University of Leicester, UK
- Third member and chair of the evaluation committee: Professor II Therese Sørlie, University of Oslo
Chair of the Defence
Professor Øyvind Sverre Bruland, University of Oslo
Principal Supervisor
Associate Professor Kristina Lindeman, University of Oslo
Summary
Endometrial cancer (EC) is the most common gynecological malignancy. Patients usually have an excellent prognosis as it is often diagnosed at an early stage. However, many patients experience recurrence and may ultimately die from the disease. Due to this risk of recurrence, patients are stratified into three risk categories: low-, intermediate- and high-risk groups, each having a distinct prognosis and indication for adjuvant therapy. Novel markers are needed to predict the individual risk of recurrence and to better tailor the treatment. L1CAM has been shown to be a very promising biomarker for identifying aggressive tumors. In this thesis L1CAM was evaluated as a prognostic marker for poor prognosis in a cohort at Oslo University Hospital (OUH). We found that L1CAM was associated with a more aggressive tumor type and more distant recurrences, but it failed to be a clinically relevant marker of poor prognosis. In Norway, radiotherapy was omitted in the primary treatment as no studies up to date have proven that this prolongs survival, and radiotherapy is rather reserved to the time of recurrence. In this thesis we investigate this treatment strategy. The clinical outcome for women with high-risk EC that received adjuvant chemotherapy only was evaluated. This investigation was based on retrospective data of patients treated at OUH. We found that these women had acceptable vaginal/pelvic control rates after adjuvant chemotherapy only. Nevertheless, for patients with stage IIIc EC the prognosis remained poor also after chemotherapy. We also studied patients with locoregional recurrence given radical radiotherapy as salvage therapy. This was a retrospective multicenter study from OUH and Haukeland University Hospital. For radionaïve EC patients with locoregional recurrence, the risk of a second relapse and death after salvage radiotherapy was low in the low and intermediate risk groups but high in the high-risk groups, mostly due to distant recurrences.
Additional information
Contact the research support staff.