Jyrki Heino - Biography#

Jyrki Heino defended his doctoral thesis in the University of Turku (UTU), Finland, 1987. A year later he joined professor Joan Massagué's group at the Department of Biochemistry, Univ. of Massachusetts, Worchester, M.A., and later moved with the same group to the Cell Biology and Genetics Program, Sloan-Kettering Institute, New York, NY. During his successful fellowship (1988-1990) in USA Heino published pioneering observations about the biology of the integrin-type cell adhesion receptors, which since then have been his main research topics.

After returning back to Finland Jyrki Heino established his own research group in the UTU (1990). Since that his most cited papers have unsolved many important questions about the biology of the collagen receptor integrins. On 1997 he started as a full Professor and the Chair of Cell Biology in the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Since 2004 he has been a full Professor and the Chair of Biochemistry in the UTU and from 2012 the Director of the Department of Life Technologies at the UTU. Heino has served two terms as a Member/Vice Chair of the Life Sciences' council at the Research Council of Finland (1999 - 2003). He was the Scientific Director of BioCity Turku biocentre (The common biocentre of the UTU and the Åbo Akademi University) 2004 - 2021 and participated actively in the established of Biocenter Finland organization (2007).

Presently, Heino's research group contains about 10 researchers and graduate students. The group is working actively with questions related to the role of matrisome proteins and cell adhesion mechanisms especially in human cancer. Under Heino's supervision 20 graduate students have completed their doctoral thesis. He has also supervised several postdoctoral researchers. Alumni of his group contains 2 full professors, 4 chief physicians and researchers working in top institutes in UK, Canada and USA. Since 2011 Jyrki Heino has been a member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.