Seminars in Health Sciences

Seminars in Health Sciences series continues with a lecture by Principal Investigator and Assistant Professor Heidi Haikala, PhD, University of Helsinki and Tampere University. 

The seminar is titled Studying lung cancer drug resistance using fully human model systems.

Dr. Heidi Haikala earned her PhD at the University of Helsinki Faculty of Medicine, focusing on cancer combination therapies and ex vivo models. She then joined Prof. Pasi Jänne’s group at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute & Harvard Medical School as a postdoctoral fellow, where her research on overcoming therapy resistance in lung cancer led to a clinical trial (NCT04676477). In 2022, Dr. Haikala established her research group at the University of Helsinki to study primary resistance to targeted therapies and immunotherapies, developing innovative, animal-free ex vivo models. The talented multidisciplinary research team of 16 scientists includes molecular biologists, data scientists, engineers, and MD scientists. In December 2024, Dr. Haikala was appointed to a tenure track position at Tampere University. Dr. Haikala is also the founder of Solid IO, a spin-off company advancing functional and individualized cancer diagnostics using patient-derived tumor-on-chip models.

More information on HaikaLab Immuno-oncology research group available in the address www.haikalab.com. 

The seminar is organized by the Faculty of Health Sciences together with Multidisciplinary Cancer Research (CANCER) research community at the University of Eastern Finland and the event is open to everyone interested.

For further information, please contact organisers by email at dpmm@uef.fi.