University of Bergen
Bergen, Hordaland, Norway
Frits Thorsen, MSC PhD, Professor. Department of Biomedicine, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway.
Frits Thorsen is a Professor in Biomedicine, Vice Director of Research, Director of the Molecular Imaging Center and Head of the Brain Metastasis Research Lab, at the Department of Biomedicine, University of Bergen in Norway. He is also Guest Professor at the Qilu Hospital of Shandong University, in Jinan, China.
Prof. Thorsen´s research focus is to increase the understanding of metastatic cancer spread to the brain. He has developed novel animal systems, injecting human metastatic cell lines systemically into immunodeficient animals, and studied the metastatic spread to the brain by advanced molecular imaging, genetic profiling, gene knockout, histology and immunohistochemistry. The group has determined a genetic profile of melanoma brain metastases, and successfully opened the blood-brain barrier for increased drug delivery in vivo. The group is also repurposing old drugs for the treatment of brain metastasis. Currently, the role of exosomes in establishing the brain metastatic niche is being investigated.
Thorsen is member of several national and international Grant Review Panels, Imaging Consortia and Cancer Research Societies. He has published 73 peer-reviewed articles, and he has been Invited Speaker at 16 international conferences. Prof. Thorsen has been appointed by the Norwegian Government as a Norwegian Representative in the Interim Board in Euro-BioImaging (2014-2019), and he is currently a Member of the Scientific Advisory Board, Biocenter Finland, Helsinki, Finland (2019-2024).
