Speakers

MAIJA PUHKA

Maija Puhka (PhD, Associate Prof., F) is senior scientist and head of the HiPREP Core facility at the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland in Helsinki. She did her PhD (2011) in the Institute of Biotechnology, University of Helsinki, studying the intricate structures of the endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi during cell cycle by electron and light microscopy. After that, she has embarked to a post-doc and a long-standing career on EV research, technology and infrastructure service development. The past projects include several that connected academia and biobanks with companies to develop EV technologies and innovations, and long-term research projects focused on EV RNA biomarkers for diabetic kidney disease and prostate cancer. Maija is a cofounder of the globally first academic EV Core facility (2016) and the founder of the HiPREP core (2020) dedicated to high-end sample preparations for nucleic acid research and extracellular vesicle analytics. She belongs to the leadership of the Urine task Force of the Standardization and Rigor committee in the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles (ISEV) and is the secretary of the Finnish Society of Extracellular Vesicles (FISEV). She organizes the Nordic Science Club for presentations and discussions of the contemporary EV science. Maija currently supervises one post-doc and three laboratory coordinators and serves in the follow-up groups of three PhD students. She has filed three innovation disclosures in the EV field, and with h-index of 19, her publications have received over 2000 citations.

KARINA BARREIRO

Dr Karina Barreiro is a postdoctoral researcher and a technical specialist in FIMM HiPREP core, supervised by Adjunct professor Maija Puhka. Her postdoctoral research focus on urinary extracellular vesicles as kidney liquid biopsies for early diagnosis and prognosis of diabetic kidney disease. During her PhD, Dr Barreiro also assessed pre-analytical variables affecting urinary extracellular vesicles quality for transcriptomics applications. Before starting her PhD, Dr Barreiro got a bachelor’s degree at the University and Buenos Aires, Argentina and a master’s degree in neuroscience from the University of Oviedo, Spain and worked in various laboratories gaining insight in ovary toxicology, neuroscience and antithrombotic molecules.

DULMINI N. SAPUGAHAWATTE, PhD'

Dulmini Nanayakkara Sapugahawatte earned her PhD in Microbiology from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2021, focusing on characterizing Streptococcus agalactiae in humans and animals, including antimicrobial resistance and zoonotic traits. Later, as a postdoc at CUHK, she continued research on antimicrobial resistance, one-health, and microbiome. Dulmini received the President’s Award for Scientific Research in 2019 and the National Research Council Merit Award in 2021. Currently, she is a research fellow at the Estonian University of Life Sciences, investigating the antimicrobial properties of extracellular vesicles from plants and animals.

MIKAEL NIKU

Mikael Niku is a senior lecturer at Veterinary Biosciences, University of Helsinki. He leads the Developmental Interactions research group, investigating how the maternal microbiota modulates the perinatal development of the intestinal immune system. 

Niku studied biochemistry and developmental biology at the University of Oulu. He did his PhD on the development of the bovine immune system and circulating stem cells at the University of Helsinki. He then worked as lecturer in physiology and anatomy at the Department of Human Nutrition, studying the impacts of diet on intestinal health. In 2015, he visited the Veterinary Faculty at Melbourne University.

Niku’s group has studied the early development of the gut microbiota in cattle, horses and pig. Currently he is especially interested in how the metabolites and extracellular vesicles produced by maternal microbiota influence the mammalian fetus. He is actively collaborating with cattle and pig health researchers in Finland and elsewhere. Niku is in the board of the Finnish Society for Immunology.

JUSTUS REUNANEN

Dr. Reunanen has worked as an Academy of Finland (AF) Postdoctoral Research Fellow in a three-year AF -funded research project “Molecular characterization of the human intestinal microbiota-host interactome” (2011-2014, 332 000 €). Next he received funding from AF to AF Research Fellow project “Fundamental molecular mechanisms behind microbial colonization of the human intestinal tract” (2016-2021, 909 000 €) at the Biocenter Oulu (BCO) and University of Oulu (UO), Finland, where he started as a PI on September 2016. In 2016 Dr. Reunanen received a 588 000 € funding from the BCO to conduct a four-year Spearhead project “Innovative approaches to discover novel antibiotics – metamining the human intestinal microbiota” (2016-2019). In 2018 Dr. Reunanen was nominated as a Spearhead project partner in BCO-funded Emerging project “Fetal microbiome and exosomes, developing immune system and health in children” (2018-2022) led by Prof. Terhi Tapiainen (MD, pediatrician). In 2019, Dr. Reunanen received a 416 000 € funding from the BCO for the Spearhead project “Secreted vesicles of the human intestinal microbiota in health and disease” (2020-2023).  In 2023 Dr. Reunanen and Prof. Tapiainen received a 456 000 eur funding from the BCO to conduct the Spearhead project “Gut microbiome in obesity from birth to adulthood” (2024-2027). The research group of Dr. Reunanen has developed methodologies for extraction of EVs from multiple clinical sample sources and for the isolation of macromolecules in the EVs along with stream-lined in-house bioinformatics pipelines. The research group of Dr. Reunanen currently comprises of 1 postdoc and 5 PhD-students.

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