Annalaura Jokiniemi, PhD, is the Coordinator of Business Finland Co-creation funded e-FINGERS-project at Neurocenter Finland, University of Eastern Finland. Her doctoral dissertation was completed in the autumn 2022, and it is focusing on gamete-level mate choice in humans, a topic that has not previously been experimentally demonstrated in humans. “The most significant result is that spermatozoa are selected inside the female reproductive tract, and we demonstrated it in two different experiments. Furthermore, these results were strongly associated with the dissimilarity of genes encoding the immune system”, describes Annalaura the key results of her doctoral thesis. In Neurocenter Finland, her focus is on the promotion of brain health comprehensively. “Brain health plays a key role what comes to the public health risks, therefore novel approaches to develop it are constantly needed. This motivates me to work on this new e-FINGERS-project”, Annalaura says.
“e-FINGERS-project is founded on the results from the FINGER study, coordinated by the Finnish institute for health and welfare, where at-risk elderly people were benefiting from the multimodal lifestyle intervention, which helped them to maintain cognitive functions” explains Annalaura. The project aims to develop a variety of virtual tools for promoting personalized brain health. Such a new tool could be, for example, software or a digital biomarker that can be used to more effectively identify people at-risk for memory disorders. This would enable at-risk group people to be directed to the right lifestyle intervention or clinical trial at earlier stage, as well as long-term development of risk monitoring and drug therapies. e-FINGERS-tools are designed to be scalable and potentially utilized in the future more broadly to other diseases in the neuro area. “The aim is to create an international virtual facilitator for innovative research in the field of neuroscience and develop activities involving industry partners at an early stage. Now, we are planning co-projects, targeting to develop new innovations to transform effective research into effective practical solutions”, Annalaura says.
The Co-Innovation project preparation, coordinated by Annalaura, will also work closely with Brain & Mind regional networks of Neurocenter Finland. “The project is led by Associate Professor Alina Solomon. Her team and Kuopio Brain & Mind network are strongly involved in the e-FINGERS-project. Additionally, the World Wide FINGERS network enables international collaboration opportunities”, explains Annalaura. “The business cooperation and new partnerships created during e-FINGERS-project will further develop the activities of the Neurocenter Finland regionally, nationally, and internationally.”
Doctoral dissertation of Annalaura Jokiniemi: https://erepo.uef.fi/handle/123456789/28343
Business Finland granted Co-creation funding for e-FINGERS project, which aims to find new and sustainable solutions for early diagnostics of memory disorders (Neurocenter Finland 26.9.2022): https://neurocenterfinland.fi/en/business-finland-granted-co-creation-funding-for-e-fingers-project-which-aims-to-find-new-and-sustainable-solutions-for-early-diagnostics-of-memory-disorders/
e-FINGERS-project: https://uefconnect.uef.fi/en/group/e-fingers-virtual-facilitator-for-personalized-brain-health-promotion-and-dementia-prevention/
FINGER intervention study (THL, Finnish institute for health and welfare): https://thl.fi/en/web/thlfi-en/research-and-development/research-and-projects/finger-research-project
_
Kuopio Brain & Mind is part of a nation-wide Neurocenter Finland researcher network. For more information, please visit www.neurocenterfinland.fi