Ovarian cancer research brought together patients and researchers at Biomedicum
In May, the third floor of the Biomedicum was filled with excited chatter as a group of 40 researchers and patients met at a tour of the laboratory facilities. The theme was ovarian cancer research to mark the annual Ovarian Cancer Awareness Day on 8 May.
Before the labtour, the participants onsite and online had an opportunity to listen to the presentations by Associate Professor Anniina Färkkilä and Prof. Sampsa Hautaniemi on the SPACE and DECIDER projects. During the round table discussion, we also heard from Doc. Johanna Hynninen, Associate Prof. Liisa Kauppi, Doc. Heini Lassus, and doc. Anna Vähärautio. The participants were interested in learning how research relates to patient care, and HRD testing among other topics. Research vocabulary also became more familiar to the participants in the discussion section, as we got definitions for many terms that are part of the everyday language of researchers, such as “clinical trial”, and “biomarker”.
Labtour
The laboratory tour gave participants a behind-the-scenes look at the daily work of researchers, and also offered them the chance to try out for themselves the steps involved in processing samples. The young scientists in the laboratories received special thanks from the participants.
Sanna Pikkusaari presented the staining of the samples.-
Participants were able to try pipetting themselves.
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Matilda Salko spoke about organoids, or three-dimensional cell models.
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Participants were introduced to the new Cycif scanner from Färkkilä Lab. Ada Junquera Mencía presented the images obtained with the scanner.
Research is carried out both in the “wet lab” and the “dry lab”. At the “dry lab” side, we learned about the training of artificial intelligence under the guidance of Oskari Lehtonen, Shams Salloumi and Yilin Li, among others.
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Oskari Lehtonen, Yilin Li and Shams Salloum talking to participants.
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Xanthoula Karypidou and Matías Marín Falco reported on drug resistance research.
We got lovely feedback of the the warm atmosphere. The meetup was motivating for the researchers and gave hope to patients. Many thanks to all the researchers, every participant on-site and online, and to the Finnish Cancer Patients Association for the cooperation in organising the event!
