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Hamid Behravan (hamid.behravan@uef.fi)

Senior researcher in artificial intelligence (AI) technology in breast cancer personalized medicine
Leading the AI group in Institute of Clinical Medicine, Pathology, and Forensic Medicine, University of Eastern Finland

 

Dr. Hamid Behravan has earned his master’s degree in 2013 and his doctorate in 2016 both in Computer Science from University of Eastern Finland. From 2017, he has been working as a senior researcher at the same university with topics related to AI and cancer. His multi-disciplinary research has attracted over 500k Euro grants from Cancer Society of Finland in 2018 and 2020, and from the European regional development fund. Alongside his own research, Dr. Behravan supervises PhD students. His research team develops innovative explainable AI-based methods to predict the breast cancer risk and the patient outcome using genetics, clinical, and imaging data.

Jarjish Rahaman (jarjish.rahaman@uef.fi)

I am a doctoral researcher, and my Ph.D. thesis is titled “Modelling and Image Reconstruction for Smart Diffuse Optical Tomography”. Diffuse Optical Tomography (DOT) is an imaging technique for studying biological structures using visible and near-infrared light. It has potential applications in medicine, such as functional brain studies, breast cancer imaging, and small animal imaging.

I work in a MSCA-DN network CONcISE, where the aim is to develop data-efficient and quality-oriented techniques for biomedical optical imaging. My research focuses on DOT, where I develop modeling and inverse problem methodologies for a SMART-DOT system. My research involves the development of a light transport model, formulation of inverse problem solutions, and collaboration with fellow researchers within the network.

Jarkko Rautio (jarkko.rautio@uef.fi)

My research is focused on the chemistry-based methods, especially prodrugs, in drug delivery and targeting. Much of the research is currently focusing on exploiting the body’s natural mechanisms for transporting nutrients, the LAT1 and GLUT1 proteins, for targeted drug delivery across the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and cancer cells that express these transporters.

Jonna Kangasniemi (jonna.kangasniemi@uef.fi)

I am doing a PhD thesis titled “Utilising the radiative transfer equation in optical tomography”. Diffuse optical tomography uses visible or near-infrared light to interrogate the internal properties of biological tissues.  The technique has potential for providing functional and structural information of biological targets with applications for example in imaging breast cancer, monitoring treatments, functional brain studies, monitoring infant brain oxygenation level, and small animal studies.

Image reconstruction problem in diffuse optical tomography is a highly ill-posed inverse problem. Ill-posedness means that even small errors in modelling or measurements can lead to large errors in reconstructions. In my thesis, I develop numerical methods for the radiative transfer equation to be applied in diffuse optical tomography.

Jorma Palvimo (jorma.palvimo@uef.fi)

Our research builds on our firm expertise in the steroid signaling and transcriptional regulation and our pioneering work on the SUMOylation of transcription factors and chromatin. Our current major goals are to:

– Identify the chromatin-bound proteins associated with the androgen receptor (AR) and the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) and reveal the role of SUMOylation in these associations.
– Discover novel means to target the AR and GR in castration resistant prostate cancer.
– Reveal the chromatin targets and mechanisms by which SUMOylation regulates gene networks and chromatin structure in cellular plasticity.

To address these aims, we will use cutting-edge genome- and proteome-wide tools, including GRO-seq, ChIP-seq, ChIP-SICAP and Turbo-ID proximity labeling, with human prostate cancer cell lines, mesenchymal stem cells and reprogrammable somatic cells as our main model systems.
We anticipate that our systemic studies and studies will provide us with novel leads for targeting steroid receptors. We also believe that our innovative and systematic approaches with multitalented research collaboration will provide us with novel SUMOylation targets and significant discoveries of the mechanisms by which SUMOylation regulates cellular plasticity and homeostasis. The results are likely to have translational potential in regenerative medicine and drug discovery for diseases, such as cancer.

Kirsi Ketola (kirsi.ketola@uef.fi)

We study the molecular mechanisms of cancer cell plasticity and prostate cancer treatment resistance including neuroendocrine transdifferentiation and cellular neuroplasticity programs in prostate cancer. We aim at identifying novel therapeutic targets and biomarkers for neuroendocrine prostate cancer and ways to bring treatment resistant prostate cancer cells back to antiandrogen therapy sensitive state. We employ several genome-wide and cellular imaging methods such as RNA-seq, ATAC-seq, ChIP-seq and live-cell high-content and -throughput imaging and drug screening to understand and target through precision medicine approaches the cellular plasticity stages and epigenetic reprogramming in cancer treatment resistance. We also utilize patient-derived organoids of prostate and neuroendocrine prostate cancer patients as well as patient blood samples on different treatment stages to identify and validate our findings. Our recent identified novel players highly overexpressed after antiandrogen therapy include neuroplasticity protein DPYSL5, which regulates antiandrogen enzalutamide resistance, chromatin reprogramming and neuronal cell phenotype in prostate cancer, Fanconi anemia pathway and FANCI which plays a role in carboplatin resistance in prostate cancer as well as a stem cell transcription factor which turns on cancer stem cell and resistance program in androgen-independent prostate cancer. By inhibiting these cellular plasticity programs we believe we can target the development of aggressive forms of cancer.

Find Ketola Lab pages: https://uefconnect.uef.fi/en/group/cancer-cell-plasticity-ketola-lab/

Leena Latonen (leena.latonen@uef.fi)

In the Cancer Stress Biology research we study the molecular, cellular and tissue mechanisms that contribute to the increased ability of cancer cells to tolerate stress. We focus on the molecular mechanisms behind the different capacities of cancer and neuronal cells to deal with protein and RNA aggregates, and the ability of cancer cells to form resistance to drugs. We also query the cancer growth patterns in tissue combining this to molecular information in order to better understand the mechanisms behind cancer cells’ ability to survive in the crossfire of different stress types. In our tissue analysis collaboration projects we search for better ways to image, visualise and quantitatively analyse histology with development of digital pathology, machine learning and AI tools.

Understanding the molecular mechanisms behind detrimental tissue effects in disease are key to find more efficient treatments for patients. Better understanding of cellular stress responses enables identification of novel drug targets. If we can inhibit the increased ability of cancer cells to bypass toxic amounts of stress, we can identify ways to destroy cancer cells. On the other hand, by activating the stress responses in cells that are unable to buffer out toxic effects, we can prevent the damage on cells and tissues in diseases such as neurodegeneration.

Please visit our research group website:
https://sites.uef.fi/cancer-stress-biology-latonen/