David Gisselsson Nord

David Gisselsson Nord leads the GMS Childhood Cancer Working Group, providing whole genome sequencing to all children diagnosed with cancer in Sweden. He is a clinician-researcher focused on understanding how cancer cells develop resilience against current ontological treatments. He has identified one of the most common mechanisms by which cancer cells alter their genome through repeated breakage of chromosomes with eroded telomeres. Dr. Gisselsson Nord has also established a series of methods for measuring the genetic instability of cancer cells that allow better prediction of prognosis and treatment response. Today he divides his time between clinical work as a pediatric pathologist and research on childhood cancer. He combines high-resolution genomics on clinical samples with mathematical modeling and methods from species evolution. By this approach, his team identified four fundamental evolutionary trajectories by which cancer cells compete with each other and evolve towards a higher degree of malignancy. Dr. Gisselsson Nord has received the Fernström Prize for Promising Young Investigators and the SIOP Award for Translational and Basic Research.