Iceland
Research projects Sigurdur’s research focuses on the genetics and molecular biology of human cancer, mainly breast-, colon- and stomach cancer. In addition to studying chromosome losses and chromosome instability, he studied several tumour suppressor genes in relation to tumour growth, like: BRCA2 (important for gene and chromosome repair), FHIT (diadenosine hydrolase, important for cell turnover), CHK2 (kinase, important for cell cycle checkpoint) and CDH1 (coding for the E-cadherin cell adhesion molecule). The research focus at the Institute for Experimental Pathology at Keldur is on various diseases, mainly infectious diseases in animals, including fishes. The activities are quite diverse with the utilization of several disciplines, e.g. prionology, virology, bacteriology, parasitology, histopathology, immunology and molecular biology. Research on the Maedi-Visna virus (MVV) has been performed from the early days of the institute (1948), a pioneering work that resulted in the first description of a lentivirus. Other research projects are on scrapie, fish bacterial and viral diseases, fish immunology, several viruses and bacteria in domestic animals, parasites and summer eczema in horses. Detailed research activities at the institute can be found at www.keldur.is.
Research on cancer genetics and cell biology
Research on the erbA oncogene