Lab Members
A multidisciplinary team dedicated to precision oncology and spatial biology research.
Principal Investigator
Anniina Färkkilä, MD PhD
Tenure track Professor in Translational Gynecologic Oncology
Anniina Färkkilä, is an Assistant professor in translational gynecologic oncology and a Specialist in gynecology at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School in 2019. In 2018 she was awarded the Seth Wichmann award by the Finnish Gynecologic Society, and the Eero Saksela award by the Finnish Cancer Institute in 2022. She was the recipient of a prestigious ERC Starting grant in 2022. Dr. Färkkilä also works as a specialist for gynecologic oncology at the Helsinki University Hospital (HUH), participating in multiple clinical trials at the HUH Comprehensive cancer center. Dr. Färkkilä coordinates the prospective Oncosys-Ova trial, and leads the Ovarian cancer project in the iCAN Digital Precision Medicine Flagship. She is a board member at the Nordic Society of Gynecologic Oncology (NSGO), the National Molecular tumor board of Finnish Cancer Center (FICAN), and the translational working group of European Network of gynecological clinical trials (ENTOG) and Gynecologic Cancer Inter Group (GCIG). She is passionate about precision oncology, improving the treatment and outcomes of cancer patients, leadership, wellbeing, family and outdoor activities.
Staff Scientists
Anastasia Lundgren, MSc
Lab Manager
Anastasia Lundgren coordinates the ONCOSYS-Ova sample collection.
Debashish Deb, MSc
IT Personnel
Debashish Deb coordinates CSC services, lab website, and databases.
Joonas Jukonen, PhD
Research Coordinator
Joonas Jukonen coordinates personnel and financials for the lab, and provides scientific support and mentoring for the students.
Maija Vääriskoski, MSc Midwife
Clinical Research Coordinator
Maija coordinates the Clinical Team, supports patient enrollment and manages data registry development in the ONCOSYS-OVA trial
Saundarya (Saun) Shah, MSc
Spatial Profiling Manager
Saundarya Shah coordinates tCycIF, Xenium, and GeoMx experiments.
Postdoctoral Researchers
Candice Madiot, PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher
Candice’s research aims to develop long-term immunocompetent organoid models derived from patients in order to study the functional consequences of interactions between the tumor and its microenvironment (TME) in ovarian cancer.
Hanna Elomaa, PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher
Hanna studies the ovarian cancer immune microenvironment using spatial profiling techniques such as tCycIF and Xenium, integrating immune and clinical data. She previously focused on immune cell contexture in colorectal cancer.
Inga-Maria Launonen, MD, PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher
Inga-Maria Launonen focus on the effects of homologous recombination deficiencies and DNA damage on the tumor-immune interactions in high-grade serous ovarian cancer.
Sara Palomino, PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher
Sara Palomino's research explores the role of the tumor microenvironment in ovarian cancer progression using spatial transcriptomics, network analysis, and systems medicine.
Doctoral Researchers
Ada Junquera, MSc
Doctoral Researcher
Ada Junquera's research explores how current therapies influence the tumor microenvironment and immune dynamics using spatial technologies, including tCycIF multiplexed imaging and GeoMx spatial transcriptomics.
Aleksandra Shabanova, MSc
Doctoral Researcher
Aleksandra Shabanova's research investigates antigen presentation–driven immune evasion to identify novel prognostic markers and therapeutic targets for personalized cancer treatment.
Andreas Hainari, BMed
Doctoral Researcher
Andreas Hainari is combining his medical training with technical studies in bioinformation technology to investigate actionable genomic aberrations in high-grade serous ovarian cancer.
Anni Suoknuuti, BMed
Doctoral Researcher
Anni Suoknuuti works on the FINPROVE clinical trial, focusing on integrating clinical and molecular data to understand treatment response to MEK inhibitors in gynecological cancers.
Elias Ruuska, MSc
Doctoral Researcher
Elias Ruuska develops and applies t-CycIF image analysis pipelines to investigate spatial cell interactions within the tumor microenvironment.
Ella Anttila, MD
Doctoral Researcher
Ella Anttila's research focuses on identifying biomarkers that predict spontaneous regression in cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 2 (CIN2) using spatial and multi-omic profiling.
Iga Niemiec, MSc
Doctoral Researcher
Iga Niemiec's research investigates immune escape mechanisms in high-grade serous ovarian cancer by integrating genetics, spatial imaging, and spatial transcriptomics.
Kürşat Birgin, MSc
Doctoral Researcher
Kürşat Birgin contributes to the research area “Mechanisms of ADC Response & Resistance” by establishing organoid co-culture models with T cells and cancer-associated fibroblasts and performing downstream experimental work and bioinformatic analyses.
María Hincapié Otero, MSc
Doctoral Researcher
María Hincapié Otero investigates how cancer-associated fibroblasts shape responses to emerging anticancer therapies using innovative, patient-specific 3D models.
Matilda Salko, MD
Doctoral Researcher
Matilda Salko's research focus is high-grade serous ovarian cancer, with particular emphasis on homologous recombination deficiency testing and its clinical implications.
Naipunya Guruprasad, MSc
Doctoral Researcher
Naipunya Guruprasad's project focuses on single-cell and spatial biomarkers in cervical cancer to uncover drivers of progression and responses to immunotherapy.
Nika Mikhailava, MSc
Doctoral Researcher
Nika’s research investigates how therapies reshape the tumor microenvironment and how these changes influence disease outcomes. Using advanced spatial technologies, she studies lung and ovarian cancers, aiming to translate her findings to the clinic using human-derived models. Ultimately, her research aims to uncover and target spatially driven resistance mechanisms.
Pablo Siliceo Portugal, MSc
Doctoral Researcher
Pablo Siliceo Portugal focuses on understanding early immunoregulatory processes that drive tumor development in homologous recombination deficient tumors.
Silja Kauppila, BMed
Doctoral Researcher
Silja Kauppila focuses on tCycIF analyses for the FINPROVE data and DCIS samples to discover spatial patterns of tumor and immune cell interactions.
Wenqing Chen, MSc
Doctoral Researcher
Wenqing Chen focuses on applying and evaluating computational methods to quantify tissue architecture in multiplexed images.
Zhihan Liang, MSc
Doctoral Researcher
Zhihan Liang's project investigates the ovarian cancer tumor microenvironment with a focus on tertiary lymphatic structure related genetic and functional features.
Ziqi Kang, MSc
Doctoral Researcher
Ziqi Kang's project focuses on profiling the tissue architecture and discovering spatial-related immune response mechanisms from multiplexed images.
Medical Students
Anni Härkönen, BMed
Medical student
Anni Härkönen is a fourth-year medical student, and her main focus is working on the clinical data of the Oncosys-ova study.
Sohvi Vauramo
Medical student
Sohvi Vauramo is a third-year medical student, and her main focus is working on the clinical data of the Oncosys-ova study.
Master's Students
Anni Lindfors, MSc
Genetics Master's Programme
Anni Lindfors works with genomic data and currently focuses on normalization approaches for easier analysis, with research interests in omics studies and bioinformatics. She has a background in biotechnology and holds a master’s degree in Life Science Technologies from Aalto University.
Rami Lahtinen
Master's Student
Rami’s research focuses on the generalisability and capabilities of the SPACEstat pipeline. He has a background in complex systems and his interests include machine learning in medicine and all things nerdy.
Viktor Schwartz
Master's Student
Viktor Schwartz investigates antibody–drug conjugate (ADC) response and resistance in long-term organoid cultures and contributes to the development of co-culture systems with T cells and cancer-associated fibroblasts.
Trainees
Antti Toivanen, MSc
Research Assistant
Antti Toivanen's research focuses on quantifying the accuracy and representativeness of Tissue Microarrays (TMAs) in sampling high-grade serous ovarian carcinoma. Started as his master's thesis project, he is continuing the development of a virtual TMA pipeline. Additionally, he provides support in clinical database development.
Milla Majaniemi
Trainee
Milla Majaniemi is doing a three months long rotation as a part of the international FIMM-EMBL Rotation Program. In Färkkilä lab her research focuses on establishing multicellular organotypic cultures from patient samples, with special focus on cancer-associated fibroblasts.
Raúl Valderrama
Trainee
Raúl Valderrama focuses on understanding the spatial context of the immune microenvironment in homologous recombination deficient tumors, investigating how immune cell composition, functional states, and spatial interactions contribute to tumor development and progression.
Clinical Researchers
Karen Ahlnäs, MSc Midwife
Clinical Research Nurse
Karen Ahlnäs is a clinical research nurse responsible for data requests and reporting of samples to Helsinki Biobank.
Laura Haapasalo, Midwife
Study Nurse
Laura Haapasalo is a midwife working with gynecological cancer patients at the Outpatient Clinic of the Women's Hospital.
Ulla-Maija Haltia, MD PhD
Gynecologic Oncologist
Ulla-Maija Haltia specializes in ovarian cancer, dividing her time between patient care and translational research.
Alumni
Postdoctoral Researchers
3 alumniAshwini Nagaraj, PhD
Ashwini Nagaraj's research focused on establishing high-grade serous ovarian cancer patient-derived immunocompetent models for functional testing of immunotherapeutic agents.
Elina Pietilä, PhD
Elina Pietilä worked on precision medicine in high-grade serous ovarian cancer using immunocompetent patient-derived ex-vivo cultures.
Julia Casado, PhD
Julia Casado's research focused on the tumor microenvironment analysis from highly-multiplexed images, developing algorithms for cell type and state identification.
Doctoral Researchers
1 alumnusFernando Perez, PhD
Fernando Perez's research focused on identifying genomic and tumor microenvironment biomarkers that predict chemotherapy response in ovarian cancer.
Staff
3 alumniAino Elomaa, BSc
Aino Elomaa coordinated the ONCOSYS-Ova sample collection as Laboratory and Clinical Sample Coordinator.
Angéla Szabó, MSc
Angéla Szabó's work focused on cell-type calling and image analysis.
Noora Hautamäki, MSc
Noora Hautamäki’s project focused on computational integration of t-CycIF data with transcriptomic and genomic data to reveal patient-level patterns in high-grade serous ovarian cancer.
Other Students
16 alumniAbhilash VA, MSc
Abhilash VA performed evaluations of immune cell-specific functional responses in patient-derived immunocompetent cultures.
Aditi Sirsikar, BSc
Aditi Sirsikar's responsibilities included analyzing multi-dimensional drug response data from patient-derived immunocompetent cultures.
Alva Grönholm, BSc
Alva Grönholm focused on performing bioinformatic analyses for the cell cycle project on highly multiplexed imaging data.
Arttu Peltola, BSc
Arttu Peltola contributed to improving the image processing pipeline by developing a metric and framework to evaluate and optimize segmentation performance.