NEWS Beatrice Melin, professor at Umeå University, is one of two new Swedish members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the class of medical sciences. Her research topic is brain tumours.
Beatrice Melin is Professor of Oncology at the Department of Diagnostics and Intervention and Senior Physician at Norrland University Hospital. Among other things, she wants to find out why some people get brain tumours, and how the genetic landscape develops from a normal cell to a tumour. She has been particularly interested in gliomas, tumours in the tissue surrounding the brain.
In her research, she has used large national registers, among other things. She has also initiated the collection of samples from thousands of patients with glioma. The aim has been to determine whether factors such as chance, heredity or environment can play a role in the onset of the disease.
The research group uses several molecular epidemiological methods, including registry studies and genetic analyses. In this way, Beatrice Melin has made the first discovery of common genetic variants associated with glioma. It has also been shown that glioma is less common in people with asthma and allergies than in others.
Her current research is focused on finding new diagnostic tools to be able to detect the tumors at an early stage. This could be done, among other things, by measuring the level of free oxygen radicals in the blood.
Rickard Sandberg, Professor of Molecular Genetics at Karolinska Institutet, is also a new member. He researches the processes that regulate the human genome and is one of the pioneers in the development of single-cell RNA sequencing.
