Ola Myklebost, PhD

Dr. Ola Myklebost

Ola Myklebost, PhD grew up outside Norway’s capital of Oslo, with short stays in Auckland, NZ, and Bergen on Norway’s west coast. He studied cell biology at the University of Oslo, and did his master project at the Institute for Cancer Research at the Norwegian Radium Hospital. He then got a grant from the UK Royal Society to work on the genetics of lipid metabolism at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School in London. There he learned recombinant DNA technologies which he used to clone and study a number of genes coding for proteins important in lipid metabolism, and back in Oslo, at the National Hospital, he continued this work including research stay at the University of Leiden and the European Molecular Biology laboratory in Heidelberg. Through this work, which lead to a doctoral degree, he became an early adopter of genomics, and was recruited back to the Radium Hospital in 1988, where he has stayed since. From the start he joined up with the clinical sarcoma group, maintaining a National Competence Centre for Sarcoma, where most Norwegian patients are treated.

Dr. Myklebost's research has concentrated on gene aberrations frequently found in samples from sarcoma patients and what these can tell us about the mechanisms involved in sarcoma development and progression. Several of these have been copied into relevant experimental cell models to understand the mechanisms better, and to try to develop this understanding into new therapeutic options. He has also participated in a number of international sarcoma consortia (see osteosarcomaresearch.org and liposarcomaresearch.org).

Dr. Myklebost was appointed professor at the Institute for Molecular Biosciences at the University of Oslo in 1998, and has for five years been an advisor to the Norwegian Board of Health on medical applications of biotechnology in medicine. He initiated and was a leader of the Norwegian Microarray Consortium (now Genomics Consortium) a service platform for genomic technologies for Norwegian scientists for 10 years. He is assistant director of the Oslo Cancer Stem Cell Innovation Centre, and head of the Norwegian Cancer Genomics Consortium.

Dr. Myklebost joined the Liddy Shriver Sarcoma Initiative's Medical Advisory and Editorial Board in October 2012.