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Research Director fPFGourrrenacCcnitsadiinooCcnneharMlalleednigcien:e
Caroline Heckman
The ‘Functional Precision Medicine for Cancer’ Grand Challenge
Caroline Heckman, Ph.D., programme investigates and predicts the efficacy of established
was appointed as the and emerging cancer drugs for molecularly-stratified subgroups
Research Director of the of cancer, as well as for individual patients.
Functional Precision Medicine
for Cancer Programme at Hundreds of drugs have either been approved or are being developed for cancer
FIMM in 2020. Her research treatment, but understanding which patients respond to these drugs, and in which
is focused on understand- combinations, is a grand challenge for the research community and the physicians
ing the mechanisms driving treating the patients, as well as for the pharmaceutical industry.
disease progression and drug
resistance in haematological This Grand Challenge programme was started at FIMM to meet these needs through
malignancies. She also applies a collaborative effort, initially between FIMM and the haematology department at
technologies for better trans- the Helsinki University Central Hospital Comprehensive Cancer Center. Later our
lation of basic research results functional precision medicine research was expanded to other departments at the
towards clinical implementa- Helsinki University Hospital as well as to other hospitals in Finland.
tion. She has been actively in-
volved in developing practices The programme aims to improve treatment decisions and outcomes for cancer pa-
for the Finnish Hematology tients by testing the sensitivity and resistance of patients’ cancer cells to hundreds of
Registry and Biobank and is different drugs, and combining those findings with deep molecular profiling, such as
a board member of the Finnish genomics and transcriptomics, of the same cells. Importantly, the results for an indi-
branch of the European vidual patient are given to the physician who can make treatment decisions based on
Patients’ Academy for the individualised profile.
Therapeutic Innovation.
The initial focus on leukaemia research has resulted in a series of publications in
8| top level journals. These studies have established FIMM and its collaborators as
global leaders in translational research of cancer. Comprehensive profiling of patient
samples has resulted in a wealth of data that can be used by other research projects,
innovation initiatives and company collaborations. For example, the drug sensitivity
and resistance testing (DSRT) data are currently being used to identify selective and
synergistic drug combinations and to develop computational machine learning mod-
els to predict treatment responses. While leukaemia has been the basis and flagship
of our precision medicine research, the program has expanded to other cancer types,
including multiple myeloma, renal cell carcinoma, melanoma, and ovarian, prostate,
lung and various paediatric cancers.
The impact of this Grand Challenge programme has already unfolded on the local
and global scales. Existing drugs have been reposited to new indications. New, pre-
clinical leads have been better prioritised for drug development. And, FIMM has been
established as an attractive partner for collaborative research and development pro-
jects with pharmaceutical companies, drawing international attention and promot-
ing Finland to the forefront of global precision medicine research and translation.
FIMM – Building a Bridge from Discovery to Medicine
