He is involved in several ongoing cellular and immuno-gene therapeutic clinical trials and his research group has put major efforts into the development of various T cell-based immunotherapeutic strategies.
In 1983, Gaudernack headed south to Oslo and worked in the group of Erik Thorsby at the Institute for Transplantation Immunology at the National Hospital.
There was a great need for fast tissue-typing techniques and the work was performed in collaboration with the biotechnology company Dynal which funded the research.
A joint collaboration with Dynal, the Norwegian Radium Hospital and Baxter resulted in development of an instrument to isolate hematopoietic stem cells in large scale using anti-CD34 mAb coupled to Dynabeads.
[5][6] At the end of the 1980s the three-dimensional structure of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) molecule was defined in parallel to identification of tumor-specific gene aberrations.
[7] Furthermore, late stage pancreatic cancer patients from two previous phase I/II clinical studies,[8][9] which received K-ras derived peptides carrying oncogenic mutations, were followed more than 10 years.
[12] This was a first in man telomerase vaccine and these data formed the basis for an ongoing phase III trial (Telovax) sponsored by Cancer UK.
[citation needed] In 2006, Gaudernack and colleagues published results from a phase I/II clinical trial in patients with non-small cell lung carcinomas (NSCLC).
Together with colleagues and industrial partners, Gaudernack is currently running several other clinical trials with hTERT peptides as therapeutic cancer vaccines.
Furthermore, Gaudernack and colleagues initiated a phase I/II clinical trial for treatment of malignant melanoma with autologous tumor-mRNA transfected DC vaccines.
In addition, Gaudernack's group has put major effort into development of various T cell-based immunotherapeutic strategies which will enter clinical trials during 2011-2012.Gaudernack is member of the Cancer Stem Cell Innovation Center (CAST) and part of his group has in the recent years focused on cancer stem cell research.