Anni Wärri

Ph.D., Visiting Associate Professor, Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, GUMC

Director of preclinical in vivo studies, the Dean for Research Laboratory, GUMC

Adjunct Professor of Cancer Biology, University of Turku Medical Faculty, Finland
 
    Anni got her M.Sc. in Experimental Biology at the Âbo Akademi University, Department of Mathematics and Science (1983), and Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology at the University of Turku Medical Faculty (1993) in Finland. During her career Anni has worked 50%-50% in the academia and pharmaceutical /biotech cancer drug discovery, but throughout her career she has focused her research activities and interests on cellular and molecular mechanisms of estrogen/phytoestrogen/anti-estrogen action in breast cancer, and developmental and epigenetic changes in the mammary gland affecting its susceptibility to breast cancer.
 
    After gaining her Ph.D. from her studies on molecular and cellular mechanisms of a novel discovery anti-estrogen against breast cancer Anni joined National Cancer Institute/NIH as a postdoctoral Fogarty Fellow (1995-1998) in the Molecular Endocrinology Section of the Laboratory of Tumor Immunology and Biology to study steroid hormone regulation of the developing mammary gland. In 1998-1999 she got the opportunity to join the Karolinska Institute, Department of Medical Nutrition (Sweden) as a visiting scientist and study the role of the newly discovered and cloned ERĪ² receptor in the developing mammary gland. Anni continued the Karolinska collaboration in 1999-2000 while funded by the Cancer Institute of Finland. In 2000 she returned to Pharma world, when she was invited to join the Biotie Therapies Corp Cancer Drug Discovery as a project manager and senior scientist. During that time, in 2000-2002, Anni took a lead also as an interim coordinator of the three-year European Commission 5th phramework program 'B.A.N.G.', an international, multicenter cancer discovery program involving both academia and pharma industry in five different countries.
 
    In 2004 Anni returned to academia, to her Ph.D. alma mater University of Turku, as a senior scientist in the Molecular Nutrition and Cancer Laboratory in the Functional Foods Forum, and to research she got interested in and learned during her postdoctoral studies at NCI (mammary gland development and breast cancer risk). For two years during that time, 2005-2006, she was also a scientific advisor of the Vice President of the University of Turku, for debriefing and writing a proposal of a new Program/Center: Turku Center for Disease Modeling (got implemented in 2007: http://www.tcdm.fi/ ). After her return to the academia in 2004 she also started to collaborate with Dr. Leena Hilakivi-Clarke at GUMC, in an NIH/U54 funded project focusing on early life developmental/epigenetic changes of the mammary gland affecting breast cancer risk. In 2008 she was invited to join the GUMC faculty as a Visiting Associate Professor in the Hilakivi-Clarke lab. In 2010 she was invited to take an assistant scientific lead of the laboratory of the Dean for Research at the Georgetown University Medical Center, Dr. Robert Clarke, and to collaborate more tightly also in the NIH funded CCSB, Georgetown Lombardi Center for Cancer Systems Biology, http://lombardi.georgetown.edu/BreastCancer/CCSB/index.html.
 
    Now, Anni is back working on her old passion -studying mechanisms of anti-estrogen action at cellular and tissue level- with an urgent and important goal: how to eradicate anti-estrogen resistant breast cancer. Her main focus as an assistant scientific lead and director of preclinical in vivo studies in the Dean for Research's lab is on developing, advancing and teaching preclinical mammary gland and cancer models. Anni has 40 peer reviewed publications, and is an inventor in four patents/ PCT/WO/EP applications from discoveries made with the two pharmaceutical companies and two of the universities she has worked in, the most recent one being from the GUMC.