Hellyeh Hamidi – BarrierForce

From fundamental research to a €30 million drug-development company

1 October 2026

Read more about how it all started with fundamental research and an interdisciplinary collaboration between neuroscientists, including Eero Castrén and his team, and computational biophysicists led by Ilpo Vattulainen at the University of Helsinki. Their long-term collaboration ultimately led to the spinout company Kasvu Therapeutics, which has now raised €30…

Sara Wickström wins the 2026 Körber European Science Prize

29 September 2026

The 2026 Körber European Science Prize has been awarded to Sara Wickström for her pioneering discoveries into how cells sense and respond to the physical world around them. The prestigious prize honours outstanding scientists conducting research in Europe and alternates annually between the life sciences and physical sciences. With prize…

Restoring the tumour mechanophenotype of vocal fold cancer reverts its malignant properties

15 February 2026

Increased extracellular matrix deposition and stiffness promotes solid tumour progression. Yet, the precise mechanotransduction pathways, especially in less-studied mechanically responsive cancers, remain poorly understood. Here we address this gap using patient-derived tumour cells from early (mobile, T1) and advanced (immobile, T3) stages of vocal fold cancer, the most common squamous…

Fast label-free live imaging with FlowVision reveals key principles of cancer cell arrest on endothelial monolayers

10 February 2026

The rapid, transient, and unpredictable nature of interactions between circulating cells and the endothelium challenges the investigation of these events under flow conditions. Here, we developed an imaging and image-analysis framework called FlowVision, which integrates fast, bright-field live-cell imaging with deep-learning-based image analysis to quantitatively track cell landing and arrest…

BarrierForce fifth annual meeting – 2026

10 February 2026

The fifth annual meeting took place in a former Turku prison (I hope everyone slept well)! We had excellent scientific discussions as always and this time we also had a lively career discussion panel led by Johanna, Sara and Ilpo. It was interesting to hear the different perspectives of…

Regulation of cell dynamics by rapid integrin transport through the biosynthetic pathway

2 February 2026

Constitutive integrin endocytosis and recycling control cell movement and morphology. In contrast, the role of newly synthesized integrins delivered via the biosynthetic pathway has been largely overlooked. We used the retention using selective hooks system to monitor the localization of new integrins exiting the endoplasmic reticulum in space and time.

Calponin isoforms define the cell-type-specific organization and dynamics of actomyosin bundles

15 December 2025

Contractile actomyosin bundles, stress fibers, are important for cell migration, adhesion, morphogenesis, and mechanosensing. Calponin (CNN) family proteins are abundant stress fiber components, but their cellular functions and isoform-specific roles remain poorly understood. By depleting the three CNN isoforms (calponin-1 [CNN1], calponin-2 [CNN2], and calponin-3 [CNN3]) individually and collectively from…

Introducing in vitro cell biology to our computational team – bootcamp 101

20 November 2025

It was a pleasure to host our Helsinki teams in Turku! The Ivaska lab provided training in basic lab techniques to the computational team and shared more advanced approaches with the other cell biologists. The highlight was of course seeing the computational team, including Ilpo, in lab coats 🙂 and…

Sara, CoE vice director, is awarded an ERC Synergy Grant to study tissue architecture

15 November 2025

We are very proud to announce that Sara, together with Daniel St Johnston and Ewa Paluch from the University of Cambridge (UK), have received an ERC Synergy Grant to study how cells shape and function in tissues. This prestigious award provides 8.5 million euros over six years. The multidisciplinary project…