Event Details

12^th February at 12:00
Onsite event
in Presidentti auditorium, BioCity
Spring 2026 program

Prof. Mohamed Bentires-Alj, University of Basel, Switzerland
Breast Tumor Heterogeneity and Metastasis: From Mechanistic Insights to Functional Personalized Therapy

Host: Jenny Pessa (jenny.pessa@abo.fi)

Coffee and sandwich served at 11:45, first come first serve!

Six PhD researchers and early-career postdocs are welcome to have a lunch and discuss with Prof. Bentires-Alj after the seminar. This is a great possibility to learn hosting skills in a friendly environment and create connections for future. Everyone is welcome to join, BioCity Turku will offer the lunch.

If you got interested, please send an email to biocityturku@bioscience.fi

Bentires-Alj lab explores both cell autonomous (genetics, epigenetics, and proteomics) and non-cell autonomous mechanisms (immune cells, adipcoytes, and other stromal factors). They use systems medicine quantitative methods, synthetic lethal screens, unbiased pooled shRNA, CRISPR, transposon-based screens, and hypothesis-driven approaches. Computational biology is a very important part of their research. Moreover, the team uses multiphoton intravital imaging to assess the interactions between cancer cells and immune cells.

These interdisciplinary projects seek to elucidate the integrated effects of signaling pathways and epigenetics on breast cell fate and tumor heterogeneity, and to leverage this mechanistic understanding into therapy. To this end, Bentires-Alj lab collaborates with clinicians and have built a Breast Cancer Personalized Medicine Team which should ultimately improve treatment for patients in Basel and throughout the world.

Selected publications

Hamelin, B., Obradović, M. M. S., Sethi, A., Kloc, M., Münst, S., Beisel, C., Eschbach, K., Kohler, H., Soysal, S., Vetter, M., Weber, W. P., Stadler, M. B., & Bentires-Alj, M. (2023). Single-cell Analysis Reveals Inter- and Intratumour Heterogeneity in Metastatic Breast Cancer. Journal of mammary gland biology and neoplasia, 28(1), 26. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10911-023-09551-z

Couto, J. P., Vulin, M., Jehanno, C., Coissieux, M. M., Hamelin, B., Schmidt, A., Ivanek, R., Sethi, A., Bräutigam, K., Frei, A. L., Hager, C., Manivannan, M., Gómez-Miragaya, J., Obradović, M. M., Varga, Z., Koelzer, V. H., Mertz, K. D., & Bentires-Alj, M. (2023). Nicotinamide N-methyltransferase sustains a core epigenetic program that promotes metastatic colonization in breast cancer. The EMBO journal, 42(13), e112559. https://doi.org/10.15252/embj.2022112559

Vulin, M., Jehanno, C., Sethi, A., Correia, A. L., Obradović, M. M. S., Couto, J. P., Coissieux, M. M., Diepenbruck, M., Preca, B. T., Volkmann, K., der Maur, P. A., Schmidt, A., Münst, S., Sauteur, L., Kloc, M., Palafox, M., Britschgi, A., Unterreiner, V., Galuba, O., Claerr, I., … Bentires-Alj, M. (2022). A high-throughput drug screen reveals means to differentiate triple-negative breast cancer. Oncogene, 41(39), 4459–4473. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41388-022-02429-0

Correia, A. L., Guimaraes, J. C., Auf der Maur, P., De Silva, D., Trefny, M. P., Okamoto, R., Bruno, S., Schmidt, A., Mertz, K., Volkmann, K., Terracciano, L., Zippelius, A., Vetter, M., Kurzeder, C., Weber, W. P., & Bentires-Alj, M. (2021). Hepatic stellate cells suppress NK cell-sustained breast cancer dormancy. Nature, 594(7864), 566–571. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03614-z

General information

• Registration is not needed, participation list is circulated in the audience
• If you are a student and later wish to get a certificate of attendance from the Frontier of Science seminars, print out the seminar diary and after the seminar ask the BioCity coordinator to sign it https://seafile.utu.fi/f/0cd08ce7e61b419b88cb/
• Please note that any audio or video recording of the seminars is strictly forbidden.
• Spring 2026 image credits to Jan Kaslin: Motor neurons (green) and newly produced cells (red) are organized around the central canal (blue cells surrounding channel that crosses the image) in the adult zebrafish spinal cord. Image taken using Leica SP8 confocal microscope.