Novo Nordisk Fonden funding to Westermarck and Ventelä teams to develop new cancer biomarker for clinical use
Different cancers have very different impact on the patient well-being. However, most of them are treated similarly, even though better treatment results could be achieved by more personalized treatment strategies. Through close collaboration, the research teams of Sami Ventelä and Jukka Westermarck, both group leaders at Turku Bioscience, have recently discovered a novel method to identify subgroups of patients suffering from head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC).
By the funding from Novo Foundation, they aim to develop these findings to a clinically applicable diagnostic method and take preparative actions for testing its performance in a future randomized clinical trial. Use of this biomarker could allow individualized therapy options thus saving patients from unnecessary side-effects and helping public health systems to fight against ever increasing costs of the cancer care.
Jukka Westermarck and Sami Ventelä received 1 million DDK (circa 134 126,91€) in funding for “Clinical-grade biomarker for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) patient therapy stratification” project.
Recent Posts
- Heidi Isokääntä Successfully Defends Dissertation on Gut Microbiome Development Heidi Isokääntä Successfully Defends Dissertation on Gut Microbiome Deveopment Turku, 26 September 2025 – Bioanalyst Read moreSeptember 29, 2025
- University of Jyväskylä to Award Honorary Doctorate to Johanna Ivaska The University of Jyväskylä will award 11 new honorary doctorates in May 2026. One of Read moreSeptember 26, 2025
- Turku Metabolomics Core Enhances MALDI Imaging with New Sprayer The Turku Metabolomics Core, part of the Turku Bioscience Centre, has acquired a SunCollect MALDI Read moreSeptember 19, 2025
- Christel Sourander Successfully Defends Her Thesis Congratulations! Christel Sourander successfully defended her thesis: “Identifying the effect of JNK on neural activity Read moreSeptember 9, 2025
- Researchers at Åbo Akademi University Discover a New Molecular Switch Regulating Breast Cancer Progression A research group led by our our affiliated group leader Professor Lea Sistonen at Åbo Read moreSeptember 4, 2025
- Autumn 2025 Frontiers of Science seminars start soon Frontiers of Science is a long-running seminar series, celebrating over 25 years of bringing internationally Read moreSeptember 3, 2025