ANNUAL REPORT 2010 Contents
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ANNUAL REPORT 2010 Contents I. Overviews ...............................................................................................................3 Year 2010 in review, Director of FIMM ............................................................................. 3 Views from the former and current Chair of the Board ...................................................5 II. FIMM Launch Event ................................................................................................ 6 III. How is the Nordic EMBL Partnership build-up progressing in Oslo and Umeå? ..........7 IV. Academician of Science, Professor Leena Peltonen-Palotie in memoriam .............. 8 V. Research ................................................................................................................ 10 Human Genomics ..........................................................................................................10 Medical Systems Biology and Translational Research ..................................................... 14 Research collaborations and highlights ..........................................................................21 Personalized medicine of cancer becoming a reality.......................................................25 Doctoral Training ...........................................................................................................26 VI. Technology Centre .................................................................................................28 Genomics Unit ..............................................................................................................28 Sequencing Unit ............................................................................................................29 Metabolomics Unit .......................................................................................................30 RNAi Unit ...................................................................................................................... 31 Chemical Biology Unit ...................................................................................................32 Bioinformatics, Data Management and IT-support Unit .................................................33 VII. Biobank .................................................................................................................35 National and International Infrastructure Projects .........................................................37 VIII. Administration Unit, Board and Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) ...........................39 IX. Selected Events in 2010 ......................................................................................... 41 X. FIMM in Figures ....................................................................................................44 Financial Report ...........................................................................................................44 Personnel Statistics .......................................................................................................45 XI. Publications by FIMM researchers 2010 .................................................................48 Publications by FIMM Molecular Medicine Network and adjunct researchers 2010 ........62 I. Overviews Year 2010 in review, Director of FIMM ramatic research progress is now being made in launched with funding from Biocenter Finland and a pi- Dhuman genomics, bioinformatics, systems biology lot project to support the build-up of international ESFRI and many other fields of biomedical research. The need infrastructure programmes. Almost half of FIMM’s activi- to bring breakthroughs in science to the everyday prac- ties (measured both in terms of funding and personnel) tice of medicine remains one of mankind’s biggest chal- are now focussed on infrastructure. FIMM is a prominent lenges. The mission of FIMM is to build a bridge from national and international infrastructure provider, help- discovery to medicine. The foundations for building ing a large community of researchers to do better sci- translational molecular medicine in Finland are excel- ence and facilitate translational medicine. lent. Finland has both a strong scientific base in biomed- ical research, but also excellent clinical and epidemiolog- The year 2010 started with dramatic news of the death ical research and a high-quality equal-access healthcare of the Academician of Science, Professor Leena Peltonen- infrastructure. However, unless these major advantages Palotie. Leena’s death was a deep loss to all of us at are brought together by multidisciplinary research col- FIMM as well as to the international human genomics laborations, we will not realize our full potential. This is community. Leena’s key impact in building the scientific what FIMM and the Nordic EMBL Partnership for Molec- foundation of FIMM is felt today and it will continue well ular Medicine are all about, realizing the full potential of after her death. In May 2011, we will organize a major small countries in Northern Europe to advance transla- international symposium to celebrate Leena’s lifetime tional molecular medicine by multidisciplinary collabo- achievements in genomics. rations with national and international networks. In March 2010, FIMM celebrated its official inauguration The year 2010 marked the third year in the build-up of ceremony followed by a scientific symposium. FIMM is FIMM as an international research institute. The year therefore now officially up and running and we can turn was characterized by rapid growth, exciting research the focus towards making progress in molecular med- progress, the setup of major national and international icine. Indeed, significant research progress has already research infrastructures and the launch of new biobank- been made, as demonstrated by the 90 publications by ing operations in the Meilahti Campus. By combining FIMM researchers, of which 21 were in top journals with first class molecular medicine research, state-of-the-art an impact factor >20. Many of the top publications repre- technology capabilities and access to large biobanks sent major international consortium studies on human and clinical data, we can build major translational op- genetics, largely initiated by the late Professor Leena Pel- portunities. This vision is behind the new organization tonen-Palotie, and now continued by the group leaders structure of FIMM, which is planned to take effect in at FIMM and at THL. In the area of human genomics, the 2011 (Figure 1). The primary focus of FIMM in translating role of FIMM group leaders has been leading in uncover- molecular medicine to clinical practice is via advancing ing e.g. the genetic basis of migraine and cardiovascu- personalized medicine, which is an area where we hope lar disease and the genetic origins of Finnish people. In to be able to also soon help patients and contribute to other areas, FIMM researchers published the first tran- the health of societies. scriptomic sequencing paper about breast cancer, set up a new personalized medicine profiling of cancer and car- During the year 2010, the number of employees at FIMM ried out many other key observations. In addition to the grew from 99 to 125, and the staff now represents 20 na- 90 publications by FIMM researchers, members of the tionalities. There are 13 group leaders at FIMM, all ap- FIMM National Network for Molecular Medicine and ad- pointed based on international evaluation. Half of the junct researchers published another 43 publications. group leaders are EMBL-style principal investigators and two are established Finland Distinguished Professors. In FIMM researchers have also been very successful in se- 2010, the build-up of new infrastructures at FIMM was curing external competitive research funding, such as FIMM 3 new projects from the EU and the IMI (Innovative Medi- land (please see below) put an overwhelmingly strong cines Initiative), a joint EU – Pharma collaborative pro- emphasis on improving the international profile of Finn- gramme. External funding now amounts to >50% of the ish science. This is seen as a key aspect of helping Fin- total FIMM budget, with a further increase predicted land stay competitive in the global competition for sci- in this percentage in 2011—2012. Acquiring, reporting ence and innovation. We have seen tremendously rapid and managing a project portfolio of some 30 individual progress at FIMM, which can to a large extent be cred- grants at FIMM in 2010 is starting to be a significant ad- ited to its international profile and strong networks, the ministrative challenge. While the increased external sup- brand of the EMBL partnership as well as the strategic port is overwhelmingly positive, there are also many as- international recruitment of talent to Finland. Thus, we pects of an international EMBL-associated institute that hope that FIMM will continue to prosper by building up- cannot be run only based on short-term competitive on these strengths. funding. Recruitment of international, talented principal investigators will continue to require a strong institu- Professor Olli Kallioniemi, Director, FIMM tional funding base. In the first five years, private foun- dations have done a remarkable job in helping to sup- Research and innovation policy guidelines for 2011–2015; port this aspect of FIMM operations. We hope to work research and Innovation Council with the partners and supporters of FIMM to maintain a strong basic funding also in the future when the first five Research Policy: