Event Details

November 4th at 14-15 (Finland time)

Virtual event

Jonna Alanko, Turku Bioscience Centre, University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University: Dendritic cell navigation and self-generated chemokine gradients

Register for the Immunology Seminar Series email list to get calendar invitation to the online seminar: https://link.webropolsurveys.com/S/D29C32AA6E8A2F7A

Host: Professor Riitta Lahesmaa ( rilahes@utu.fi )

Immunology seminar series is jointly organised by the Finnish Society for Immunology, InFLAMES Flagship and Turku Bioscience. For further information contact Anne Lahdenperä  ( ankahy@utu.fi ) or Riitta Lahesmaa ( rilahes@utu.fi ), University of Turku.

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PhD Jonna Alanko is a Principal Investigator at the Turku Bioscience Centre, University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University, and the winner of the Scandinavian Society for Immunology (SSI) Young Investigator Award 2025 from Finland. Jonna completed her PhD in 2016 in Prof. Johanna Ivaska’s group at the University of Turku, after which she conducted extensive postdoctoral research abroad in Prof. Michael Sixt’s group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA). After returning to Finland, Jonna continued her career as an InFLAMES Postdoctoral Fellow in Prof. Marko Salmi’s group until securing funding for her own research group (InstruFellow and Academy Research Fellow).

Jonna and her Immune Cell Navigation group investigate how immune cells—particularly dendritic cells—migrate and navigate in response to different molecular cues, using various live-cell migration setups (https://bioscience.fi/immune-cell-navigation/). Jonna’s previous work revealed dendritic cell–generated CCL19 gradients as a previously unknown guidance mechanism, and her group is now continuing this research to open new avenues for understanding immune responses. Their research aims to uncover the detailed mechanisms of leukocyte navigation, with the ultimate goal of therapeutically manipulating these mechanisms to guide cells to desired locations, such as toward tumors or away from autoimmune sites.

Selected publications:

Alanko, J., Uçar, M.C., Canigova, N., Stopp, J., Schwarz, J., Merrin, J., Hannezo, E., and Sixt, M. (2023) CCR7 acts as both a sensor and a sink for CCL19 to coordinate collective leukocyte migration. Sci Immunol 8, eadc9584, DOI:10.1126/sciimmunol.adc9584

Uçar, M.C., Alsberga, Z., Alanko, J., Sixt, M. & Hannezo, E. (2025) Self-generated chemotaxis of mixed cell populations, PNAS 122 (34) e2504064122, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2504064122