Department of Medical Oncology

Inselspital Bern

The Department provides a wide range of therapies, clinical trials, and support services for cancer patients and their relatives. The Department's experts adapt these interventions to the patient's individual situation. The research focus is on translational medicine in the fields of immuno-oncology and hematooncology.

To the Inselspital website

Director and Chief Physician

Prof. Adrian Ochsenbein

Profile

  • Teaching students of medicine, biomedicine, and biology as well as graduate students at the Graduate School of Cellular and Biomedical Sciences (GCB)
  • Research groups involved in basic, translational, and clinical research
  • Research focus in translational medicine in the field of Immuno-Oncology and Hematooncology
  • Up to 200 patients per year are treated in clinical interventional phase 1-3 trials
  • Largest center for CAR-T cell therapies in Switzerland
  • Certified Phase 1 Trial Unit
  • Development of biomarkers to further optimize personalized treatment in the field of gastrointestinal oncology
  • Gender medicine

External Partners

  • European Initiative to Enhance the current Sex as a biological variable (SABV) policy in preclinical biomedical Research (EU-SABV)
  • Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN)
  • HOVON
  • ETOP-Adopt trial
  • SCI Luca registry
  • Princess Margaret Hospital Toronto,
  • ILCCO (International lung cancer consortium;
  • Swiss Personalized Oncology National Data Stream
  • SAKK
  • ETOP (European Thoracic Oncology Platform)

Grants

  • SNF Grant 320030-236111
  • SNF Grant Nr. 10.000.783
  • Regular funding from SNSF, Swiss Cancer League, Care@home,
  • Philas Foundation: MELCHRONO- A prospective randomized trial investigating chrono-immunothrapy for advanced melanoma
  • Swiss Cancer Institute: MELCHRONO- A prospective randomized trial investigating chrono-immunothrapy for advanced melanoma and several private foundations
  • The Lancet Oncology: the Omics Comission
  • Werner und Hedy Berger Stiftung

Highlights 2025

Landing page of the future App

Prof. Dr. phil. Alexander Wünsch: eHealth in Palliative Cancer Care - An App-Based Support Intervention for Family Caregivers

An e-health application is being developed to reduce caregiver burden and provide low-threshold access to nursing and psychosocial support. Based on a profound needs assessment, we developed mockups illustrating key functions and user flows of our future App. These prototypes are currently being tested with family caregivers and health care professionals to gather feedback on usability and relevance. The goal is to deliver a supportive, easy-to-use tool that strengthens caregivers in their daily challenges. It is a cooperation project with palliative care Inselspital, Spitex Bern and AvanzaTec, currently funded by care@home.

Huber et al., Swiss Med Wkly. 2025

Results of the pooled analysis by patient sex

Dr. Lorenz Frehner: Sex differences in outcomes of neoadjuvant therapies for resectable NSCLC

This analysis included 499 patients with resectable stage III NSCLC from five SAKK trials done between 1997 and 2019. Of these, 31.7 percent were female and 68.3 percent were male. All patients received chemotherapy before surgery, which differed between the trials. Some also had radiation or immunotherapy. The median follow up was 7.8 years. The study looked at whether female and male pateitns showed differences in survival, safety, and surgical results after the preoperative treatment.

Women lived longer without cancer events (EFS) and also lived longer overall (OS). Cancer related deaths and adverse events were similar in both groups. Males had a higher rate of non cancer deaths, mostly due to other causes such as cardiovascular disease.

Frehner et al., ESMO Open. 2025

Prof. Carsten Riether: Intestinal bacteria drive CD8⁺ T cell exhaustion in chronic myeloid leukemia

In this study, we demonstrate that gut-resident Sutterella species induce MyD88/TRIF-dependent exhaustion of cytotoxic T lymphocytes, thereby impairing anti-leukemic immunity and accelerating chronic myeloid leukemia progression. These findings delineate a microbiota–immune axis in leukemia pathogenesis and highlight the importance of investigating Sutterella in patients with CML.

Ronchi et al., Cell Rep. 2025