Altogether 152 post-doctoral scholars from around Finland took part in the autumn application round. The number of applicants increased by 31 % from the previous year. A grant could be awarded to almost 16 % of the applicants.
The Pool has a role in making Finnish research more international. After thirty application rounds nearly 800 scholars have already received funding through the Pool for a research period abroad (i.e. outside of Finland). One third of the grantees have received a two-year funding.
During the Pool’s upcoming three-year-period 2025-2027 there will be thirteen foundations involved, allocating altogether 3.2 million euro annually to post-doctoral scholars heading abroad from Finland. The research periods vary from 6 months up to 24 months.
The Pool’s next application round will take place from 1 January until 31 January 2025, when some 1.6 million euro will be given in grants. The results of this round will be published by May 2025.
The Finnish Foundations’ Post Doc Pool has proven to be an important instrument of research funding which has enabled young scholars with families to finance research periods at top universities abroad. The grants awarded by the Pool are determined flexibly in accordance with the applicant’s needs and they often include their family’s moving expenses and children’s day care or school fees.
The Finnish Foundations’ Post Doc Pool was set up in the autumn of 2009. During the current three-year-period 2022-2024 there were thirteen foundations involved, allocating altogether 3.25 million euro annually to the pool. The Pool’s foundations are Ella and Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation, Emil Aaltonen’s Foundation, Alfred Kordelin Foundation, the Foundation for Economic Education, Päivikki and Sakari Sohlberg Foundation, Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, Finnish Cultural Foundation, the Finnish Medical Foundation, Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland, the Society of Swedish Literature in Finland, Finnish Foundation for Technology Promotion, Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation and the Ulla Tuominen’s Foundation.
Further information: www.postdocpooli.fi, info(at)postdocpooli.fi or from coordinator Mikko-OlaviSeppälä, tel. + 358 400 868 006
Over the past ten years, cancer treatment has been revolutionised by so-called immuno-oncology therapies. These drugs boost the activity of white blood cells.
“The drugs take the brakes off white blood cells, allowing them to attack cancerous tissue more vigorously,” says Katri Selander, a specialist in cancer medicine and associate professor of medical cell biology.
The mechanism of immuno-oncology therapies is as follows.
A cancer cell is a cell that has stopped obeying the body’s orders and is growing on its own. It begins to produce proteins on its surface that are foreign to the body. The white blood cells that defend the body should therefore recognise the cancer cells and destroy them.
“However, cancer cells have their own immune defence. They know how to put proteins on their surface that fight white blood cells. Immuno-oncology drugs bind to these proteins and, as a result, white blood cells can attack cancer cells.”
The immuno-oncology drugs that have been in clinical use the longest include ipilimumab, nivolumab, pembrolizumab, atezolizumab and avelumab. These drugs do not help all patients, but for some they are of considerable help.
These drugs were first tried in patients with advanced cancer and no other hope. In some patients, the drugs destroyed the cancer tumour completely.
Today, immuno-oncology drugs are increasingly being offered to cancer patients even in the early stages of treatment when the cancer has not yet spread. They are now being offered for some lung, bowel and breast cancers, melanoma and head and neck cancers.
The downside of treatments
There is, however, one major risk with these drugs.
“When white blood cells attack cancerous tissue more aggressively, they may also attack the body’s own healthy tissues more aggressively.”
The most common side effects of these autoimmune attacks are rash, diarrhoea, thyroid dysfunction, and lung inflammation. The symptoms are often mild, but in the worst cases they can be fatal. Rare and life-threatening complications include intrahepatic bile duct destruction and pituitary destruction.
Patient data have shown that an autoimmune disease in the patient or a relative – such as rheumatoid arthritis or type 1 diabetes – increases the likelihood of immuno-oncology drugs causing white blood cells to attack the patient’s own body.
“The patients may not remember or know if any of their relatives have had autoimmune diseases, so the most sensible way to find out is to do a genetic test.”
It is therefore not advisable to boost white blood cell function in patients in whom white blood cell function can cause problems even without boosting. Immuno-oncology treatments are not offered for these patients.
“However, patients may not know if they have a latent autoimmune disease. They also may not remember or know if any of their relatives have had autoimmune diseases. The most sensible way to find out is to do a genetic test,” says Selander.
“Susceptibility to the side effects of immuno-oncology drugs can also be increased by something that does not manifest as an autoimmune disease but is genetic.”
Gene tests to support treatment solutions
Selander and her team are developing a genetic test that would reveal susceptibility to side effects. This would allow a doctor prescribing cancer treatments to assess whether it is safe to administer immuno-oncology drugs to a cancer patient based on the test alone.
Katri Selander, Sini Nurmesniemi ja Essi Parviainen are developing a genetic test that would reveal susceptibility to side effects.
Many other research groups in pharmaceutical companies and universities around the world are developing similar tests. There are probably many predisposing genetic variants.
Selander and her group have identified one. The gene is linked to immune function. Selander is unable to disclose the gene in any more detail than this as their research is still ongoing.
A gene discovery in a relatively small number of patients at Oulu University Hospital must first be confirmed in a larger number of patients through collaborations with international researchers. Then the research article will still have to be published.
Research led by Selander is being carried out in many places in Finland. Patient samples are being collected at Selander’s workplace at Oulu University Hospital. There is clinical collaboration and data exchange with the cancer clinics of the University Hospitals of Tampere and Kuopio. Laboratory studies are being carried out at the Department of Biomedicine at the University of Oulu, and mouse experiments are being carried out at the University of Turku, where Selander holds a professorship.
Selander’s research team has transplanted into mice a gene discovered in humans that may predispose them to the side effects of immuno-oncology drugs. The aim is to find out whether the susceptibility gene and immuno-oncology drug treatment alone are enough to trigger a mouse’s immune defence system to attack its own cells or whether other factors, such as a particular diet, are needed. Selander is not yet able to say what these results will be.
Towards individualised cancer treatment
Selander received her PhD from the University of Oulu in 1996, focusing on the mechanism of action of osteoporosis drugs, and planned to do the orientation phase of her medical work at the Pello Health Centre in northern Finland. However, a PhD-related business trip to a conference of bone researchers in Switzerland changed her plans.
“The leisure programme at the conference included skiing. Having grown up on the slopes of Ounasvaara in Rovaniemi, I was excited to teach Texas researchers about the sport, and they in turn invited me to do post-doc research at their home university,” says Selander.
“If I had known who they were, I would not have dared to go and give them advice. They were great gurus in their field. I decided not to work at the health centre in Pello but to become a researcher in Texas instead.”
Selander spent the period from 1996 to 2000 at the University of Texas at San Antonio campus studying the mechanisms by which breast cancer metastasises to the bone, and that is also where she met her future husband. From 2000 to 2017, the couple worked at the University of Alabama, where Selander established her own research group.
“One day, researchers in Finland and elsewhere will hopefully have mapped out all the genetic variants that prevent immuno-oncology treatments.”
Selander had three children and in 2017, when her oldest child was 17, she decided that it was the last sensible time to move to Finland so that all her children could easily access the Finnish school system.
Selander started working as a cancer specialist at Oulu University Hospital in September 2017 and within a couple of months she had this research topic in mind.
“Not all patients experience side effectsfrom immuno-oncology treatments, but some patients have severe symptoms. I thought that the cause must be genetic and that we needed to investigate the matter further,” says Selander.
The end result is clear in her mind: one day, researchers in Finland and elsewhere will hopefully have mapped out all the genetic variants that prevent immuno-oncology treatments.
“Then patients could immediately undergo genetic testing and treatments would only be given to those who have no genetic predisposition to serious harm. If they then develop mild side effects from the drugs, the treatment could still be continued. Immuno-oncology therapies are so good that it is not worth stopping them for minor reasons,” says Selander.
The occurrence of type 1 diabetes has multiplied in Finland since the 1950’s, and excessive consumption of cow’s milk has been found to predispose individuals to the development of the disease.
Doctoral candidate at the University of Helsinki’s Doctoral Programme in Population Health, Katariina Koivusaari, has spent the past three and half years looking into the connection between the processing of milk and the development of type 1 diabetes in children. The possible link to asthma was included in the research later on.
– Cow’s milk is a source of protein, nutrients, and vitamins for children, including calcium, iodine, vitamin D, and some types of vitamin B, and milk products are very popular. On the other hand, the occurrence of type 1 diabetes is the highest in the world, which is why doing this research in Finland makes sense, Koivusaari says.
Prior to her thesis Koivusaari completed her master studies, and classified all milk-containing food products in the National Food Composition Database according to how they were heat-treated and homogenised during processing.
In high pasteurisation the heat inactivates proteins in the milk, and in high-temperature treatment new compounds are also created. In homogenisation, the fat in milk is broken into smaller compounds, which changes the surface structure. This can, according to Koivusaari, affect the structure of the proteins attached to the fat.
Apart from different types of commercial drinkable milk, the classification included quark, cheese, yoghurt, and other milk products. Extra attention was paid to children’s foods including formulas, porridges, and baby food products containing cow’s milk.
– Milk is a very complex matter and in previous research it has been left unclear what is the exact factor in milk that increases the risk of developing the illness. Understanding this would mean that it could be taken into consideration in processing, says Koivusaari.
High-temperature treatment is connected to asthma
Koivusaari performed her thesis work at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare. She made use of the research material collected since 1996 as part of the Finnish study, Type 1 Diabetes Prediction and Prevention, which according to Koivusaari, is one of the most important studies in the field.
Statistical analysis was prepared by a doctoral candidate at Tampere University, Essi Syrjälä and the research project was supervised by Tapani Alatossava at the University of Helsinki and Suvi Virtanen and Sari Niinistö at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare.
The study didn’t find any of the processing methods to be a significant marker but excessive consumption of milk products was connected to a higher risk of developing type 1 diabetes.
High-temperature treated milk products, which include infant formulas, seem to be linked to a higher asthma risk. This is the first study in which such connection has been found.
The study results are promising, yet more research is needed in order to verify the outcome. Koivusaari intends to defend her thesis by the end of this year, and after that she is going to embark on a new study that once again relates to children and food.
– The subject is always relevant because eating is mandatory. I find it meaningful to link the knowledge in my study field to children – for me that is important and interesting, she says.
Doctoral candidate Katariina Koivusaari, was awarded a grant worth 24 000 euros in 2018 from the Finnish Cultural Foundation. She studied the connection of milk processing and the outbreak of type 1 diabetes and asthma in children.
Malocclusions are common oral health problems, which are treated with significant public funds. They have an impact on oral functions including eating and speech but also on aesthetic appearance, social interaction, self-esteem, and psychological wellbeing. Researchers and clinical practitioners have lately shown interest in individual impacts of malocclusions on quality of life but on a population-level the subject has been rarely researched.
– Most of the studies were conducted among children and adolescents. In that sense our study population is unique and significant because it consists of adults, which means that we can evaluate the impacts of malocclusions on a long-term basis, tells Linnea Närhi, a dentist and doctoral student at the University of Oulu, who is currently working on a thesis funded by a grant from the Cultural Foundation to investigate the connection between malocclusions and orthodontic treatment, and oral health-related quality of life.
Quality of life research supports patient-centered health care
Närhi’s investigation is part of the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966 study conducted with research material originally comprising of the children born in 1966 in the provinces of Oulu and Lapland. Närhi was involved in the 46 year-olds’ follow-up study. The study group consisted of 1964 volunteers, who participated in a standardized clinical oral and dental examination, including the registration of occlusion and digital 3D dental casts.
In addition, the participants filled in a questionnaire concerning their oral health-related quality of life. So far the results have strengthened the idea that malocclusions really are associated with oral health-related quality of life.
“We found out that men had more severe malocclusions but women experienced greater impact on their quality of life.”
– It was surprising that the gender difference was so significant. We found out that men had more severe malocclusions but women experienced greater impact on their quality of life. On the other hand the research revealed that people can adapt to their condition, and may not experience remarkable impacts of even severe malocclusions, Närhi tells.
The results of the three-part research are aimed for publishing in international high quality orthodontic journals, and presented in international congresses. The first sub-study of the thesis is already complete, and it was published in May 2019 in the European Journal of Orthodontics. The concrete benefit of the study will be seen in health care as an increased understanding of the impacts of malocclusions.
– Thanks to the research we will be better at understanding what is significant for the patient, and defining which malocclusions should be treated. Health care resources are limited, and so it is important to determine, which patient groups benefit from treatment the most. Quality of life research is intended to explain patient’s perspective, which should always be taken into consideration when assessing the demand of orthodontic treatment, Närhi concludes.
Dentist and researcher Linnea Närhi received a 31 500 euro grant in 2020 to study the connection between malocclusions and oral health-related quality of life.
