Nelander lab

We are a research group at the Department of Immunology, Genetics, and Pathology (IGP) at Uppsala University. Combining data-driven and experimental methods, we are investigating cancers of the nervous system, such as glioblastoma and neuroblastoma. Our goal is to understand the principles that govern these cancers' growth and to discover new treatments. Our research approach is based on a strong integration of patient-specific experimental models, state-of-the-art molecular biology, and large-scale computation. If you enjoy working in a cross-disciplinary team and are open to new ideas and challenging research problems, contact us for further information.

Our Team

Sven Nelander, professor
Cecilia Krona, senior scientist
Anders Sundström, bioinformatician
Gergana Popova, postdoc
Hitesh Mangukiya, postdoc
Rebecka Stockgard, Ph.D. student
Ida Larsson, Ph.D. student
Emil Rosén, researcher
Soumi Kundu, researcher
Ludmila Elfineh, engineer
Milena Doroszko, researcher
Adam Malik, postdoc
Adam Lång, Ph.D. student
Josephine Heinold, research assistant
Alper Koch, BSc student
Irem Yildirim, Ph.D. student

Our Projects



Data-driven drug discovery for pediatric neural cancers

Our team is exploring how innovative analyses of big data sets can be used to discover new therapeutics. In one of our recent projects, we developed a new algorithm, TargetTranslator, which could identify new treatments for neuroblastoma (Almstedt et al, Nature Communications 2020). Our current work explores how data-driven methods can be used to target a broader range of pediatric cancer, including medulloblastoma and DIPG. Our team has invented several other tools for data-driven cancer research, such as CancerLandscapes, EPoC, and CoPIA.







Selected Publications

  • Almstedt E, Rosén E, Gloger M, Stockgard R, Hekmati N, Koltowska K, Krona C, Nelander S. Real-time evaluation of glioblastoma growth in patient-specific zebrafish xenografts. Neuro Oncol. 2022 May 4;24(5):726-738.
  • Vinel C, Rosser G, Guglielmi L, Constantinou M, Pomella N, Zhang X, Boot JR, Jones TA, Millner TO, Dumas AA, Rakyan V, Rees J, Thompson JL, Vuononvirta J, Nadkarni S, El Assan T, Aley N, Lin YY, Liu P, Nelander S, Sheer D, Merry CLR, Marelli-Berg F, Brandner S, Marino S. Comparative epigenetic analysis of tumour initiating cells and syngeneic EPSC-derived neural stem cells in glioblastoma. Nat Commun. 2021 Oct 21;12(1):6130.
  • Gerlee P, Altrock PM, Malik A, Krona C, Nelander S. Autocrine signaling can explain the emergence of Allee effects in cancer cell populations. PLoS Comput Biol. 2022 Mar 3;18(3):e1009844.
  • Larsson I, Dalmo E, Elgendy R, Niklasson M, Doroszko M, Segerman A, Jörnsten R, Westermark B, Nelander S. Modeling glioblastoma heterogeneity as a dynamic network of cell states. Mol Syst Biol. 2021 Sep;17(9):e10105.
  • Marques C, Unterkircher T, Kroon P, Oldrini B, Izzo A, Dramaretska Y, Ferrarese R, Kling E, Schnell O, Nelander S, Wagner EF, Bakiri L, Gargiulo G, Carro MS, Squatrito M. NF1 regulates mesenchymal glioblastoma plasticity and aggressiveness through the AP-1 transcription factor FOSL1. Elife. 2021 Aug 17;10:e64846.
  • Seçilmiş D, Hillerton T, Nelander S, Sonnhammer ELL. Inferring the experimental design for accurate gene regulatory network inference. Bioinformatics. 2021 May 12:btab367.
  • Merisaari J, Denisova OV, Doroszko M, Le Joncour V, Johansson P, Leenders WPJ, Kastrinsky DB, Zaware N, Narla G, Laakkonen P, Nelander S, Ohlmeyer M, Westermarck J. Monotherapy efficacy of blood-brain barrier permeable small molecule reactivators of protein phosphatase 2A in glioblastoma. Brain Commun. 2020 Jan 11;2(1):fcaa002.
  • Johansson P, Krona C, Kundu S, Doroszko M, Baskaran S, Schmidt L, Vinel C, Almstedt E, Elgendy R, Elfineh L, Gallant C, Lundsten S, Ferrer Gago FJ, Hakkarainen A, Sipilä P, Häggblad M, Martens U, Lundgren B, Frigault MM, Lane DP, Swartling FJ, Uhrbom L, Nestor M, Marino S, Nelander S. A Patient-Derived Cell Atlas Informs Precision Targeting of Glioblastoma. Cell Rep. 2020 Jul 14;32(2):107897.
  • Johard H, Omelyanenko A, Fei G, Zilberter M, Dave Z, Abu-Youssef R, Schmidt L, Harisankar A, Vincent CT, Walfridsson J, Nelander S, Harkany T, Blomgren K, Andäng M. HCN Channel Activity Balances Quiescence and Proliferation in Neural Stem Cells and Is a Selective Target for Neuroprotection During Cancer Treatment. Mol Cancer Res. 2020 Oct;18(10):1522-1533.
  • Dalmo E, Johansson P, Niklasson M, Gustavsson I, Nelander S, Westermark B. Growth-Inhibitory Activity of Bone Morphogenetic Protein 4 in Human Glioblastoma Cell Lines Is Heterogeneous and Dependent on Reduced SOX2 Expression. Mol Cancer Res. 2020 Jul;18(7):981-991. doi: 10.1158/1541-7786.MCR-19-0638.
  • Almstedt E, Elgendy R, Hekmati N, Rosén E, Wärn C, Olsen TK, Dyberg C, Doroszko M, Larsson I, Sundström A, Arsenian Henriksson M, Påhlman S, Bexell D, Vanlandewijck M, Kogner P, Jörnsten R, Krona C, Nelander S. Integrative discovery of treatments for high-risk neuroblastoma. Nat Commun. 2020 Jan 3;11(1):71. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-13817-8. PMID: 31900415; PMCID: PMC6941971.
  • Čančer M, Drews LF, Bengtsson J, Bolin S, Rosén G, Westermark B, Nelander S, Forsberg-Nilsson K, Uhrbom L, Weishaupt H, Swartling FJ. BET and Aurora Kinase A inhibitors synergize against MYCN-positive human glioblastoma cells. Cell Death Dis. 2019 Nov 21;10(12):881. doi: 10.1038/s41419-019-2120-1. PMID: 31754113; PMCID: PMC6872649.
  • Kaffes I, Szulzewsky F, Chen Z, Herting CJ, Gabanic B, Velázquez Vega JE, Shelton J, Switchenko JM, Ross JL, McSwain LF, Huse JT, Westermark B, Nelander S, Forsberg-Nilsson K, Uhrbom L, Maturi NP, Cimino PJ, Holland EC, Kettenmann H, Brennan CW, Brat DJ, Hambardzumyan D. Human Mesenchymal glioblastomas are characterized by an increased immune cell presence compared to Proneural and Classical tumors. Oncoimmunology. 2019 Aug 22;8(11):e1655360. doi: 10.1080/2162402X.2019.1655360. PMID: 31646100; PMCID: PMC6791439.
  • Mega A, Hartmark Nilsen M, Leiss LW, Tobin NP, Miletic H, Sleire L, Strell C, Nelander S, Krona C, Hägerstrand D, Enger PØ, Nistér M, Östman A. Astrocytes enhance glioblastoma growth. Glia. 2020 Feb;68(2):316-327. doi: 10.1002/glia.23718. Epub 2019 Sep 11. PMID: 31509308.
  • Munksgaard Thorén M, Chmielarska Masoumi K, Krona C, Huang X, Kundu S, Schmidt L, Forsberg-Nilsson K, Floyd Keep M, Englund E, Nelander S, Holmqvist B, Lundgren-Åkerlund E. Integrin α10, a Novel Therapeutic Target in Glioblastoma, Regulates Cell Migration, Proliferation, and Survival. Cancers (Basel). 2019 Apr 25;11(4):587. doi: 10.3390/cancers11040587. PMID: 31027305; PMCID: PMC6521287.
  • Nelander S. Increasing the accuracy of glioblastoma subtypes: Factoring in the tumor's cell of origin. Mol Cell Oncol. 2018 Nov 27;6(1):1302907. doi: 10.1080/23723556.2017.1302907. PMID: 30788413; PMCID: PMC6370376.
  • Weishaupt H, Johansson P, Sundström A, Lubovac-Pilav Z, Olsson B, Nelander S, Swartling FJ. Batch-normalization of cerebellar and medulloblastoma gene expression datasets utilizing empirically defined negative control genes. Bioinformatics. 2019 Sep 15;35(18):3357-3364. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btz066. PMID: 30715209; PMCID: PMC6748729.
  • Xie Y, Sundström A, Maturi NP, Tan EJ, Marinescu VD, Jarvius M, Tirfing M, Jin C, Chen L, Essand M, Swartling FJ, Nelander S, Jiang Y, Uhrbom L. LGR5 promotes tumorigenicity and invasion of glioblastoma stem-like cells and is a potential therapeutic target for a subset of glioblastoma patients. J Pathol. 2019 Feb;247(2):228-240. doi: 10.1002/path.5186. Epub 2019 Jan 10. PMID: 30357839.
  • Matuszewski DJ, Wählby C, Krona C, Nelander S, Sintorn IM. Image-Based Detection of Patient-Specific Drug-Induced Cell-Cycle Effects in Glioblastoma. SLAS Discov. 2018 Dec;23(10):1030-1039. doi: 10.1177/2472555218791414. Epub 2018 Aug 3. PMID: 30074852.
  • Baskaran S, Mayrhofer M, Kultima HG, Bergström T, Elfineh L, Cavelier L, Isaksson A, Nelander S. Primary glioblastoma cells for precision medicine: a quantitative portrait of genomic (in)stability during the first 30 passages. Neuro Oncol. 2018 Jul 5;20(8):1080-1091. doi: 10.1093/neuonc/noy024. PMID: 29462414; PMCID: PMC6280139.
  • Lönnstedt IM, Nelander S. FC1000: normalized gene expression changes of systematically perturbed human cells. Stat Appl Genet Mol Biol. 2017 Sep 26;16(4):217-242. doi: 10.1515/sagmb-2016-0072. PMID: 28862994.
  • Fedele V, Dai F, Masilamani AP, Heiland DH, Kling E, Gätjens-Sanchez AM, Ferrarese R, Platania L, Soroush D, Kim H, Nelander S, Weyerbrock A, Prinz M, Califano A, Iavarone A, Bredel M, Carro MS. Epigenetic Regulation of ZBTB18 Promotes Glioblastoma Progression. Mol Cancer Res. 2017 Aug;15(8):998-1011. doi: 10.1158/1541-7786.MCR-16-0494. Epub 2017 May 16. PMID: 28512252; PMCID: PMC5967621.
  • Jiang Y, Marinescu VD, Xie Y, Jarvius M, Maturi NP, Haglund C, Olofsson S, Lindberg N, Olofsson T, Leijonmarck C, Hesselager G, Alafuzoff I, Fryknäs M, Larsson R, Nelander S, Uhrbom L. Glioblastoma Cell Malignancy and Drug Sensitivity Are Affected by the Cell of Origin. Cell Rep. 2017 Jan 24;18(4):977-990. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2017.01.003. Erratum in: Cell Rep. 2017 May 2;19(5):1080-1081. PMID: 28122246.
  • Niklasson M, Maddalo G, Sramkova Z, Mutlu E, Wee S, Sekyrova P, Schmidt L, Fritz N, Dehnisch I, Kyriatzis G, Krafcikova M, Carson BB, Feenstra JM, Marinescu VD, Segerman A, Haraldsson M, Gustavsson AL, Hammarström LG, Jenmalm Jensen A, Uhrbom L, Altelaar AF, Linnarsson S, Uhlén P, Trantirek L, Vincent CT, Nelander S, Enger PØ, Andäng M. Membrane-Depolarizing Channel Blockers Induce Selective Glioma Cell Death by Impairing Nutrient Transport and Unfolded Protein/Amino Acid Responses. Cancer Res. 2017 Apr 1;77(7):1741-1752. doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-16-2274. Epub 2017 Jan 13. PMID: 28087597.
  • Kling T, Ferrarese R, Ó hAilín D, Johansson P, Heiland DH, Dai F, Vasilikos I, Weyerbrock A, Jörnsten R, Carro MS, Nelander S. Integrative Modeling Reveals Annexin A2-mediated Epigenetic Control of Mesenchymal Glioblastoma. EBioMedicine. 2016 Oct;12:72-85. doi: 10.1016/j.ebiom.2016.08.050. Epub 2016 Sep 18. PMID: 27667176; PMCID: PMC5078587.
  • Schmidt L, Baskaran S, Johansson P, Padhan N, Matuszewski D, Green LC, Elfineh L, Wee S, Häggblad M, Martens U, Westermark B, Forsberg-Nilsson K, Uhrbom L, Claesson-Welsh L, Andäng M, Sintorn IM, Lundgren B, Lönnstedt I, Krona C, Nelander S. Case-specific potentiation of glioblastoma drugs by pterostilbene. Oncotarget. 2016 Nov 8;7(45):73200-73215. doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.12298. PMID: 27689322; PMCID: PMC5341973.
  • Ramachandran M, Yu D, Dyczynski M, Baskaran S, Zhang L, Lulla A, Lulla V, Saul S, Nelander S, Dimberg A, Merits A, Leja-Jarblad J, Essand M. Safe and Effective Treatment of Experimental Neuroblastoma and Glioblastoma Using Systemically Delivered Triple MicroRNA-Detargeted Oncolytic Semliki Forest Virus. Clin Cancer Res. 2017 Mar 15;23(6):1519-1530. doi: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-16-0925. Epub 2016 Sep 16. PMID: 27637889.
  • Allen M, Bjerke M, Edlund H, Nelander S, Westermark B. Origin of the U87MG glioma cell line: Good news and bad news. Sci Transl Med. 2016 Aug 31;8(354):354re3. doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aaf6853. PMID: 27582061.
  • Padhan N, Nordling TE, Sundström M, Åkerud P, Birgisson H, Nygren P, Nelander S, Claesson-Welsh L. High sensitivity isoelectric focusing to establish a signaling biomarker for the diagnosis of human colorectal cancer. BMC Cancer. 2016 Aug 25;16(1):683. doi: 10.1186/s12885-016-2725-z. PMID: 27562229; PMCID: PMC5000422.
  • Wee B, Pietras A, Ozawa T, Bazzoli E, Podlaha O, Antczak C, Westermark B, Nelander S, Uhrbom L, Forsberg-Nilsson K, Djaballah H, Michor F, Holland EC. ABCG2 regulates self-renewal and stem cell marker expression but not tumorigenicity or radiation resistance of glioma cells. Sci Rep. 2016 Jul 26;6:25956. doi: 10.1038/srep25956. PMID: 27456282; PMCID: PMC4960591.
  • Mitchell JS, Li N, Weinhold N, Försti A, Ali M, van Duin M, Thorleifsson G, Johnson DC, Chen B, Halvarsson BM, Gudbjartsson DF, Kuiper R, Stephens OW, Bertsch U, Broderick P, Campo C, Einsele H, Gregory WA, Gullberg U, Henrion M, Hillengass J, Hoffmann P, Jackson GH, Johnsson E, Jöud M, Kristinsson SY, Lenhoff S, Lenive O, Mellqvist UH, Migliorini G, Nahi H, Nelander S, Nickel J, Nöthen MM, Rafnar T, Ross FM, da Silva Filho MI, Swaminathan B, Thomsen H, Turesson I, Vangsted A, Vogel U, Waage A, Walker BA, Wihlborg AK, Broyl A, Davies FE, Thorsteinsdottir U, Langer C, Hansson M, Kaiser M, Sonneveld P, Stefansson K, Morgan GJ, Goldschmidt H, Hemminki K, Nilsson B, Houlston RS. Genome-wide association study identifies multiple susceptibility loci for multiple myeloma. Nat Commun. 2016 Jul 1;7:12050. doi: 10.1038/ncomms12050. PMID: 27363682; PMCID: PMC4932178.
  • Gerlee P, Nelander S. Travelling wave analysis of a mathematical model of glioblastoma growth. Math Biosci. 2016 Jun;276:75-81. doi: 10.1016/j.mbs.2016.03.004. Epub 2016 Mar 25. PMID: 27021919.
  • Darmanis S, Gallant CJ, Marinescu VD, Niklasson M, Segerman A, Flamourakis G, Fredriksson S, Assarsson E, Lundberg M, Nelander S, Westermark B, Landegren U. Simultaneous Multiplexed Measurement of RNA and Proteins in Single Cells. Cell Rep. 2016 Jan 12;14(2):380-9. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2015.12.021. Epub 2015 Dec 31. PMID: 26748716; PMCID: PMC4713867.
  • Xie Y, Bergström T, Jiang Y, Johansson P, Marinescu VD, Lindberg N, Segerman A, Wicher G, Niklasson M, Baskaran S, Sreedharan S, Everlien I, Kastemar M, Hermansson A, Elfineh L, Libard S, Holland EC, Hesselager G, Alafuzoff I, Westermark B, Nelander S, Forsberg-Nilsson K, Uhrbom L. The Human Glioblastoma Cell Culture Resource: Validated Cell Models Representing All Molecular Subtypes. EBioMedicine. 2015 Aug 15;2(10):1351-63. doi: 10.1016/j.ebiom.2015.08.026. PMID: 26629530; PMCID: PMC4634360.
  • Swaminathan B, Thorleifsson G, Jöud M, Ali M, Johnsson E, Ajore R, Sulem P, Halvarsson BM, Eyjolfsson G, Haraldsdottir V, Hultman C, Ingelsson E, Kristinsson SY, Kähler AK, Lenhoff S, Masson G, Mellqvist UH, Månsson R, Nelander S, Olafsson I, Sigurðardottir O, Steingrimsdóttir H, Vangsted A, Vogel U, Waage A, Nahi H, Gudbjartsson DF, Rafnar T, Turesson I, Gullberg U, Stefánsson K, Hansson M, Thorsteinsdóttir U, Nilsson B. Variants in ELL2 influencing immunoglobulin levels associate with multiple myeloma. Nat Commun. 2015 May 26;6:7213. doi: 10.1038/ncomms8213. PMID: 26007630; PMCID: PMC4455110.
  • Kling T, Johansson P, Sanchez J, Marinescu VD, Jörnsten R, Nelander S. Efficient exploration of pan-cancer networks by generalized covariance selection and interactive web content. Nucleic Acids Res. 2015 Sep 3;43(15):e98. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkv413. Epub 2015 May 7. PMID: 25953855; PMCID: PMC4551906.
  • Studham ME, Tjärnberg A, Nordling TE, Nelander S, Sonnhammer EL. Functional association networks as priors for gene regulatory network inference. Bioinformatics. 2014 Jun 15;30(12):i130-8. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btu285. PMID: 24931976; PMCID: PMC4058914.
  • Cvijovic M, Almquist J, Hagmar J, Hohmann S, Kaltenbach HM, Klipp E, Krantz M, Mendes P, Nelander S, Nielsen J, Pagnani A, Przulj N, Raue A, Stelling J, Stoma S, Tobin F, Wodke JA, Zecchina R, Jirstrand M. Bridging the gaps in systems biology. Mol Genet Genomics. 2014 Oct;289(5):727-34. doi: 10.1007/s00438-014-0843-3. Epub 2014 Apr 13. PMID: 24728588.
  • Schmidt L, Kling T, Monsefi N, Olsson M, Hansson C, Baskaran S, Lundgren B, Martens U, Häggblad M, Westermark B, Forsberg Nilsson K, Uhrbom L, Karlsson- Lindahl L, Gerlee P, Nelander S. Comparative drug pair screening across multiple glioblastoma cell lines reveals novel drug-drug interactions. Neuro Oncol. 2013 Nov;15(11):1469-78. doi: 10.1093/neuonc/not111. Epub 2013 Oct 6. PMID: 24101737; PMCID: PMC3813417.
  • Cancer Genome Atlas Research Network, The Cancer Genome Atlas Pan-Cancer analysis project. Nat Genet. 2013 Oct;45(10):1113-20. doi: 10.1038/ng.2764. PMID: 24071849; PMCID: PMC3919969.
  • Gerlee P, Schmidt L, Monsefi N, Kling T, Jörnsten R, Nelander S. Searching for synergies: matrix algebraic approaches for efficient pair screening. PLoS One. 2013 Jul 25;8(7):e68598. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0068598. PMID: 23935877; PMCID: PMC3723843.
  • Gerlee P, Nelander S. The impact of phenotypic switching on glioblastoma growth and invasion. PLoS Comput Biol. 2012;8(6):e1002556. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002556. Epub 2012 Jun 14. PMID: 22719241; PMCID: PMC3375261.
  • Jörnsten R, Abenius T, Kling T, Schmidt L, Johansson E, Nordling TE, Nordlander B, Sander C, Gennemark P, Funa K, Nilsson B, Lindahl L, Nelander S. Network modeling of the transcriptional effects of copy number aberrations in glioblastoma. Mol Syst Biol. 2011 Apr 26;7:486. doi: 10.1038/msb.2011.17. PMID: 21525872; PMCID: PMC3101951.
  • Nelander S, Wang W, Nilsson B, She QB, Pratilas C, Rosen N, Gennemark P, Sander C. Models from experiments: combinatorial drug perturbations of cancer cells. Mol Syst Biol. 2008;4:216. doi: 10.1038/msb.2008.53. Epub 2008 Sep 2. PMID: 18766176; PMCID: PMC2564730.