Speaker

Pekka received his PhD in 2009 from University of Helsinki, Finland, on studies demonstrating how tumor suppressor mutations in the stromal compartment can control epithelial growth via paracrine signals. During his postdoctoral training in the Whitehead Institute and MIT, he continued the research on cell-cell interactions in the context of stem cells and their surrounding niche. In 2013 Pekka started his own laboratory in the University of Helsinki, and in 2015 he was recruited to run another laboratory in the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. His laboratory focuses on aging induced alterations in tissue renewal, and has discovered multiple niche mediated mechanisms reducing stem cell capacity in the old tissue. Their discoveries have also illuminated how tumor cells bias clonal competition by employing mechanisms that reduce stem cell capacity during normal aging. In addition to the work on cell extrinsic mechanisms, his lab has made key discoveries highlighting the role of cellular metabolism in stem cells. They discovered that asymmetrically dividing stem cells segregate their metabolic organelles selectively, and that instead of being a consequence of other fate determining programs, cellular metabolism can function as a pioneering fate determinant after cell division.

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