Anna Vähärautio (nee Saramäki) is a cancer researcher with a biochemistry background (PhD 2008) and informatics interest developed during postdoctoral period (2009-2012 in Jussi Taipale lab, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden). In her lab, wet-lab method development is intertwined with informatics tools to study the emergence of treatment resistance in ovarian cancer by using clinically relevant models such as organoids. She is currently especially interested in cell fate during cancer treatment: how do cell’s history and genetics modulate the decision to adapt or die? This is also the focus of her ERC Consolidator grant for the project STRONGER: What doesn’t kill you: Overcoming primed and adaptive resistance in ovarian cancer (2024-2029).
Matías is a MSCA postdoctoral fellow interested in the analysis of copy-number aberrations in scRNAseq data and its implications in moduling the tumor's trancriptome as well as the response to chemotherapy in HGSOC.
Yafei Wang is a postdoctoral researcher with a background in stem cell biology and gene-editing technology. During her postdoctoral work at the Raivio Lab (2018-2024), she utilized single-cell RNA sequencing to investigate the ontogeny of GnRH neurons and improved the differentiation efficiency of GnRH neurons derived from human pluripotent stem cells (Wang, Stem Cells, 2022). She also developed an auxin-inducible degradation system in stem cells, enabling rapid depletion of target proteins (Li*, Wang*, Genome Biology, 2024). Currently, her research interests focus on the initiation and progression of high-grade serous ovarian cancer, with a particular emphasis on treatment resistance.
My research interest is utilizing CRISPR/Cas9 based genome editing or gene perturbation and single-cell RNA sequencing to test the function of specific genes on cancer initiation, metastasis, target treatment and chemoresistance.
Anna focuses on analyzing scRNA-seq data of high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC) patient samples and their normal counterpart samples from fallopian tube epithelium. The projects involve the identification of cell states and characterization of their dynamical relationships within normal and cancer cells. Her interests are in tumor evolution and drug resistance.
Joona is a student from the new Doctoral Pilot Program (ICANDOC). His research involves developing a single-cell transcriptional signal recording system utilizing CRISPR/Cas12a based editing to track the activation of these pathways in cells both before and during chemotherapy. By applying this novel methodology to patient-derived high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC) organoids, the project aims to uncover how prior stress signaling contributes to cellular adaptation and resilience against chemotherapy in a genetically diverse setting.
Rene is a student from the new Doctoral Pilot Program (iCANDOC). His project is focused on integrating transcriptomic single-cell bioinformatics analysis to create a pipeline to understand the role of different stressors in high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC). The aim is to be able to measure the "scars" that these stressors create, how they evolve across clones, and what the consequences of this are in HGSOC resistance.
Project: Approximating how copy number variations affect gene expression using deep latent variable models.
Extensive copy number variations (CNVs) are a hallmark of high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC). To gain deeper insights into the impact these CNVs have on gene expression, we utilize deep latent variable models in an attempt to identify latent features or sub-populations that would reveal significant relationships between copy number variations and gene expression profiles.
Emma is a bioinformatics master's student in Life Science Technologies at Aalto University. Her project is focused on the influence of copy number variation (CNV) on transcriptomic profiles in treatment-resistant high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC) phenotypes. The aim is to study transcriptomic signatures arising from genetic variation using single-cell RNA sequencing data and computational modelling.
Anastasia Lundgren is the lab manager, technician and study nurse. She keeps Vähärautio Lab safe, clean, organized, equipped and smoothly running.