Turku Bioscience was awarded 1.5 M€ by the Academy of Finland FIRI2020 program -Research infrastructures as collaborative platforms.

Cutting-edge Immunoprofiling

Director Riitta Lahesmaa, Deputy directors Eleanor Coffey and Tapio Lönnberg (UTU): Immunoprofiling Infrastructure for Personalised Medicine and Diagnostics, total 1 183 346 €

This Academy of Finland grant  of 1.2 M€ will be used to strengthen the already established infrastructure to develop a world-class immunoprofiling platform to boost research excellence and innovation in close collaboration with the life sciences industry in Finland. The platform builds on Turku’s R&D stronghold in the fields of immunology, oncology and immuno-oncology. This infrastructure will facilitate top level translational research in immunology and aims at understanding the central role of our immune response in cancer as well as autoimmune, inflammatory and infectious diseases including COVID-19. The technologies offered enable development of new therapies and diagnostics as well as improved personalized medicine.

“We are delighted about this grant. The timing is perfect, because immunoprofiling unit is central for the new Academy of Finland Flagship  ‘Innovation Ecosystem Based on the Immune System“ – InFLAMES. The funding will enable us to execute the latest cutting-edge technologies to boost top research in immunology and innovations based on this”, Riitta Lahesmaa says.

Platform for High Throughput Clinical Proteomics

The Biocenter Finland funding of 498 000€ to Biocity Turku (represented by Jyrki Heino, University of Turku  and John Eriksson, Åbo Akademi University) was awarded to Turku Bioscience PIs Prof. Peter James and Research Director Eleanor Coffey for mass spectrometry instrumentation.

“This will boost ongoing collaborations on biomarker discovery and biologics with the Finnish and UK industrial sector. Specifically this instrumentation will bring unsurpassed accuracy and sensitivity for intact protein analysis and characterization without a need to predefine post-translational modifications”, Peter James says.