The first Finnish Organ-on-Chip meeting gathered Finnish and international experts in Tampere

FIn OoC 2024

The two-day meeting of FIN OoC 2024 included over 180 participants from 20 universities and 12 countries with four keynote presentations, 23 oral presentations and 32 poster presentations as well as sponsor exhibition. The event was hosted by the Centre of Excellence in Body-on-Chip Research from the University of Tampere and co-hosted by the previous Helsinki Organ-on-Chip host, HaikaLab from the University of Helsinki.

The first keynote speaker, Prof. Andries van der Meer (University of Twente), presented various organ-on-chip platforms, their standardization, and the significant commercial and clinical prospects of the field. Prof. Olli Kallioniemi, who recently started as Research Program Director at FIMM, discussed technology-, data-, and AI-driven molecular precision medicine, highlighting both the positive and negative future prospects of AI. Cardiologist Katriina Aalto-Setälä described her group’s developments in heart-on-chip applications and their connections to patient treatments. Finally, internationally recognized leader in bioethics, Jeremy Sugarman, emphasized the importance of ethics in the organ-on-chip field and provided tangible examples of different ethical situations related to organ-on-chip work.

Shorter, 10-minute talks covered various aspects of organ-on-chip research, including platform design, pharmacology studies, development of multitissue models, and disease models such as heart-stroke syndrome.

Participants came from Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Türkiye, the U.S., and Vietnam. The meeting was sponsored by 11 companies and organizations: FinnAdvance, Cellbox Labs, NETRI, Labnet, TTOP, FIN3R, Orion Pharma, Mese Scale Discovery, Biogenium, Evident, and Immunodiagnostic Oy.

Young researcher award winners were Erik Niemi (University of Jyväskylä) for the best oral presentation and Fatma Zakzook (Tampere University) for the best poster.

FIN OoC 2025 Announced

The Director of the Centre of Excellence in Body-on-Chip Research, Prof. Minna Kellomäki, opened the meeting together with the coordinator and leader of the organizing team, Miina Björninen. They announced that the next meeting, FIN OoC 2025, will be held in Tampere on October 8-9, 2025.

 

Organisers
Miina Björninen (TAU)
Janne Koivisto (TAU)
Tanja Hyvärinen (TAU)
Sanna Hagman (TAU)
Hanna Vuorenpää (TAU)
Hannu Välimäki (TAU)
Oskari Kulta (TAU)
Mari Pekkanen-Mattila (TAU)
Jussi Koivumäki (TAU)
Heidi Haikala (Univ. Helsinki)
Bassel Alsaed (Univ. Helsinki)

Volunteers
Amna Adnan (TAU)
Laitinen Hanna (Univ. Helsinki)
Sweeta Akbari (TAU)
Ella Lampela (TAU)
Emma Pesu (TAU)
Lotta Kulmala (TAU)
Kati Rinnekari (TAU)
Sini Saarimaa (TAU)
Elias Kuusela (TAU)
Nuutti Lahtinen (TAU)
Siiri Suominen (TAU)
Alma Yrjänäinen (TAU)
Saara Haikka (TAU)
Vilhelmiina Hännikäinen (TAU)
Jamie Kersting (TU BS/TAU)
Anastasiia Yianncou (TAU)