Systems Biology of an Inflammatory Disease

Principal Investigator

Professor Risto Renkonen (Short CV, Publications)
Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki
Transplantation Laboratory
tel. +358 2941 25111
risto.renkonen (at) helsinki.fi

Post docs

Pirkko Mattila, PhD (Wetlab, transcriptomics and in silico analyses)
Jutta Renkonen, PhD (Microscopy, bioinformatics, pathway analysis)
Sanna Toppila-Salmi, MD, PhD (Clinical patient recruitment, ethical committee work, specimen collection, data analyses)

Graduate students

Sakari Joenväärä (High resolution mass spectrometry at Haartman Institute)
Ville Parviainen (Mass spectrometry, wetlab and in silico)
Niina Tohmola (Mass spectrometry work related to quantification, wetlab and in silico)
Hannu Peltoniemi (In silico algorithm development for mass spectrometry analyses)
Suvi Ravela (Mass spectrometry work related to glycoproteins, wetlab and in silico)

National collaboration

Professor Ulf-Håkan Stenman, University of Helsinki,
Professor Antti Mäkitie, University of Helsinki, but 2009 at Turku University Hospital, 
Professor Timo Paavonen, University of Tampere,
Docent (associate prof) Leena Valmu, Finnish Red Cross Blood Service,
Docent (associate prof) Anne Leppänen, University of Helsinki,
Kimmo Mattila, M.Sc., Center for Scientific Computation
Docent Helena Isoniemi et. al at the Liver Surgery Clinic, Helsinki University Hospital

International collaboration

Professor Wytske Fokkens, Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, nasal epithelial cells and tissues and their pathology in perennial allergies

Research interests

Reductionistic analyses, i.e., work focusing on one or only a few molecules are gradually complemented by systems approaches. The ability to discover new, etiologically relevant disease mechanisms is the major motivation for unbiased explorative approaches. The drawback of such top-down experiments is that they are very expensive and produce much more raw data than hypothesis-derived approaches thus generating an overflow of data. However, the urgent need to develop in silico data managing and analysis environments has been recognized by several research groups and biocompanies and we will also contribute to both the development of computer environments, wet lab and in silico tools and techniques as well as finally to try to learn new system level processes from glycobiology and inflammatory diseases.

• Background and our previous work
• Aims
• Further development of wetlab and in silico methods
• Infrastructures and contributions to the science community at large
• Training & careers