Halvor Ullern
Researcher in Helene Knævelsrud's autophagy group at the University of Oslo and first author of a 2026 study of folliculin loss in Birt-Hogg-Dubé kidney cancer
Department of Molecular Medicine, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, and Centre for Cancer Cell Reprogramming, University of Oslo (papers 2025–2026)
Halvor Ullern was first author of a 2026 Autophagy Reports paper in this Atlas (ULL2026). Birt-Hogg-Dubé syndrome is an inherited condition in which people carry a faulty copy of the FLCN gene and can develop kidney tumours. Folliculin, the FLCN protein, is part of the switch that controls mTORC1, the growth-control complex, and TFEB, a master regulator of lysosomes and autophagy. In kidney cancer cells from patients, losing FLCN kept TFEB permanently in the nucleus and made mTORC1 overactive. Bulk autophagy, the cell's self-recycling, still ran normally. Even so, the autophagy receptor p62 (SQSTM1) piled up in enlarged clumps, and the same build-up was seen in kidney tumours from a Norwegian group of patients.
The lesson for researchers is practical: a build-up of p62 is often read as a sign that autophagy is blocked, but here it was not. The study used patient-derived cells and tumour samples, so it describes this one cancer type.
Ullern works in Helene Knævelsrud's group in the Department of Molecular Medicine at the University of Oslo. In 2025 Ullern was also first author of a review in the Journal of Molecular Biology on the links between autophagy and sleep. PubMed lists two papers with the name; no further career details were found.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | M | FLCN loss is characterized by SQSTM1/p62 accumulation despite functional autophagy flux in Birt-Hogg-Dubé syndrome-associated kidney cancer ULL2026 First author: showed in Birt-Hogg-Dubé kidney cancer cells and patient tumours that p62 accumulates even though bulk autophagy still works. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 1
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Halvor Ullern.
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- Helene Knævelsrud Autophagy researcher who studies how cells recycle their own material and how this process is regulated in development and disease, including cancer.
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