Trine Ballestad Rounge

Trine Ballestad Rounge is a Professor at the Section for Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Biosciences at the University of Oslo. Her research focuses on genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, and microbiome-related research with the primary goal of identifying biomarkers in tissues, biofluids, or associated microbes that reveal early-stage cancer progression.

Her research interests include:

• Bioinformatics and molecular biology
• Development of sequencing protocols and advanced bioinformatics analyses
• Identification of cancer biomarkers through genomic, epigenomic, and microbiome approaches
• Development of bioinformatics tools including GENOMICON-Seq, VirMake, HoCoRT, and TAME-seq

Dr. Rounge leads several major research projects including CRCbiome (funded by the Norwegian Cancer Society and HSØ), which aims to identify biomarkers in the gut microbiome for colorectal cancer screening. She is the Norwegian PI for the Genome of Europe project, part of the 1+MG initiative, collaborating with Helsedirektoratet and Elixir. She also leads the JanusRNA project funded by the Norwegian Research Council, which aims to identify circulating RNAs as cancer biomarkers using serum samples. In this project, her team has analyzed more than 4000 samples from pre-diagnostic samples across seven different cancer sites.

Her scientific work shows a strong focus on cancer biomarker discovery, particularly using multi-omics approaches. Her recent publications demonstrate expertise in microbiome analysis, circulating RNA profiling, and bioinformatics tool development. Her research spans colorectal cancer, ovarian cancer, endometrial cancer, testicular germ cell tumors, and HPV-related cancers.

Dr. Rounge collaborates extensively with researchers across Europe and leads cross-institutional groups working on genomic events in persistent HPV infection. Her work bridges computational biology with clinical applications, aiming to translate genomic findings into practical cancer screening tools.