Pia first discovered ”microparticles” during her PhD studies, while studying the role of collagen receptors in platelet functions including procoagulant activity. Platelet-derived EV staining of fibrin strands in thrombus-formation mimicking system of blood flow generated her first EV publication in 1996 . In 2000-2004, she did a post doc in the University of Cambridge U.K, on platelet collagen receptors. Upon returning to Finland, she worked as an Academy of Finland –funded independent post doctoral researcher and research fellow with the aim to develop tools for integrin affinity states with phage display before becoming a university lecturer in Biochemistry of Health in 2008. By then, the field of EVs had geared up, enabling a return to her passion. Soon also others joined in the quest to understand the communication of the cells’ own social media, EVs, which generated the EV group in 2011.
In 2016, the EV group jointly with Dr. Maija Puhka in FIMM was proud to open the world’s first core facility dedicated to EVs to offer our expertise to other researchers in Finland and abroad.
Since 6 February 2024, Pia is the President of the Finnish Society of Extracellular Vesicles (FISEV).
Katariina’s research focuses on the role of platelets and platelet-derived EVs in disease pathologies such as cardiovascular diseases and cancer. The particular interest is in how platelet activators relevant to such diseases impact platelets and their EVs, and how such EVs might contribute to the disease development.
Katariina has gained expertise on EV methodological development and standardization as a part of the EURAMET EMPIR project METVES II with the goal to standardize concentration measurements of EVs for medical diagnoses. She also participated in the Extracellular Vesicle Ecosystem (EVE) consortium aimed at discovering the diagnostic and therapeutic potential of EVs, where she was developing EV flow cytometry and other new EV analytics.
Umar has a Master's degree in Biomedical Imaging. He is finalizing his doctoral thesis about cancer. He is interested in cancer and platelet interactions and works closely with Zeynep and Mari. Umar's interests lie in the delicate interplay between platelets and cancer cells and his work focuses on investigating the role of platelet EVs in cancer cells' functionality and the effect of cancer EVs on platelet functionality.
Johanna is interested in the EV-mediated communication between platelets and other immune cells and studies the biophysical and therapeutic properties of platelet-derived EV (PEV) subpopulations. Johanna’s research focuses on tailoring PEV generation with different platelet activations and establishing new methods for physicochemical and functional characterization of PEVs at the subpopulation level. Johanna has previously set up a novel asymmetric flow field-flow fractionation method for subpopulation analyses in the EV Group and EV Core (Master’s thesis) and during the EVE consortium.
Zeynep received her Master’s degree on different exosomal miRNA signatures in Familial Mediterranean Fever (FMF) disease from Hacettepe University, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Medical Biology, Turkey.
Zeynep has been working in the PLEASER project since 2022. She is using RNA sequencing and different cell-based functional assays to investigate the interaction between cancer cells and platelets aided through EVs in a 3D melanoma model. Zeynep’s other project in the EV group was to apply metabolomics to discover the candidate biomarker molecules in cancer EVs within the EVE consortium.
Snehadri has been interested in the field of EVs since his Master's studies. He did his Master's thesis in the EV group, investigating the effect of different lipoproteins on the formation of platelet-derived EVs.
In his PhD work, Snehadri has been exploring the role of EVs in the microenvironment of bone tumour (osteosarcoma) in 2D and 3D settings. He divides his time between the EV group and the Oral cancer research group (PI: Tuula Salo) in the Meilahti campus.
Zhilin received her master's degree in oncology from Harbin Medical University, China, focusing on the promotion role of circRNAs in thyroid cancer.
Rosabella has been working for EV-Core since 2019 and branched out into EV-group in the summer 2021, helping with several projects as a technical assistant.
Outside of her work in the EV-group, Rosabella studies physiology at the University of Helsinki and is working on her bachelors thesis on 'Extracellular vesicles as biomarkers in neurodegenerative diseases'. After that she will focus on her masters degree in neurophysiology while continuing to work with EVs at the EV-Core.
Helin has worked in the University of Helsinki since 2011 as a technical assistant, and joined the EV group in 2022.
She has a Master's degree in applied chemistry and biotechnology from Tallinn University of Technology.
As an associate group member of the EV group, Maija explores the commercialization options for an innovative and scalable EV isolation method, FastEV, in a joint project with Pia which has funding from Business Finland TUTL and UH HiPOC grants (-2021) and belonged to Spark Finland. Maija is dedicated to help researchers to grab the potential of the fast-developing EV field with improved technologies. The HiPrep core, the functions of which Maija is heading at FIMM side, has the same focus.
Maija also studies the EV contained (mi)RNA biomarkers for diabetic kidney disease and urological cancers at FIMM with Prof. Leif Groop, Adj. Prof. Vilja Pietiäinen and Prof. Antti Rannikko.
Mari is currently a visiting researcher in the EV group and a supervisor of Johanna and Zeynep. Mari’s research focuses on the potential of platelet-derived EVs as natural therapeutics in regenerative medicine, and how activating platelets with various agonists affects the molecular cargo of platelet-derived EVs. Mari has a long track record in omics (proteomics and metabolomics) relevant in many projects. For example, she is studying the potential metabolomic fingerprint of cancer EVs with Zeynep. From September 2021-2023, Mari worked in the PLEASER project studying the effect of cancer-EVs on platelets as a university researcher.