Speaker Profile
Akseli Hemminki

Akseli Hemminki MD, PhD

Oncology, Radiology
Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

Connect with the speaker?

Akseli Following an award-winning PhD in cancer genetics, Dr Hemminki completed his MD and then moved to the US to learn about gene therapy in 2000. He fell in love with oncolytic viruses and helped set up three clinical trials at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Subsequent to returning to Finland he specialized in oncology and radiotherapy and set up his research group, the Cancer Gene Therapy Group, at the University of Helsinki. He has won numerous awards, including the Best PhD thesis in the Faculty, the Sigrid Juselius Award, the Duodecim Young Researcher award and the EACR Young European Cancer Researcher Award.

He has been named the Outstanding Young Person of the World in 2006 by Junior Chamber International and is one of the few non-Americans to receive awards from the National Cancer Institute and ASCO. He received the European Research Council Starting Grant in the first round of funding in 2006, when the funding rate was only 3%. He has been involved in a dozen clinical trials, of which most difficult to set up was the first oncolytic virus trial performed in Northern Europe.

He has also pioneered patient-by-patient use of oncolytic virus therapies under the EU Advanced Therapy Directive. In 2008 Hemminki co-founded Oncos Therapeutics Ltd, a company currently involved in clinical translation of several families of oncolytic viruses, whose patent applications were written by Hemminki. Hemminki served as the Chairman of the Board, Chief Scientific Officer, Head of Research and Development and Board member of Oncos”. In 2015 Oncos merged successfully with Targovax AS, of Norway. Hemminki has published more than 240 peer-reviewed manuscripts on cancer research and oncolytic viruses, many of them in the best journals of the field.
EVENTS & ACTIVITIES (Speaking, Spoken, and Authored)