Tandem Industry Academia (TIA) Seed (2024)
Professor Cecilia Nauclér’s project to shed new light on cellular metabolism and to develop improved treatments for cancer and cytomegalovirus infection
Project title:
Defining the Achilles heel for energy production in Warburg cells and its consequences for cytomegalovirus infection
Approved funding:
200 000 €
Applicant:
University of Turku
Industrial partners:
NADMED & Faron Pharmaceuticals
“It is very important for me as a new professor in Finland to gain from the expertise within our industry collaborations and to build new competence and networks that can impact on the future development of our projects.”
Cecilia Nauclér, Professor
A large part of the population acquires cytomegalovirus infection (CMV) during their lifetime. CMV belongs to the herpes family and remains permanently in the body’s cells after infection. Research has shown that the cytomegalovirus becomes active in many different cancer tumours. By studying the effect of CMV on cellular metabolism, Professor Cecilia Nauclér and her team have made surprising discoveries about how cancer cells produce biomass and energy. Cancer cells utilise carbohydrates, proteins, and fats either from food or the body’s reserves and generate energy differently than normal cells. The altered metabolism of cancer cells is known as the Warburg effect.
However, how cells transition from normal metabolism to the Warburg effect remains unclear and therefore the current understanding of energy production in cancer cells may be flawed. This collaborative project between Professor Nauclér, NADMED, and Faron Pharmaceuticals aims to better understand cellular metabolism and provide insights that could revolutionise the treatment of both cancer and CMV infections.
Assistant Professor Anton V. Zasedatelev’s project committed to develop more energy-efficient ways of processing large data volumes
Project title:
Ultrafast energy-efficient processing of optical signals by light-matter Bose-Einstein condensates
Approved funding:
207 148 €
Applicant:
Aalto University
Industrial partners:
Picophotonics & Reflekron & Microsoft Oy
“Industry collaboration extends traditional academic work by revealing real business needs. Business partners provide guidance and help navigate us through the unexplored to create truly useful innovations.”
Anton V. Zasedatelev, Assistant Professor
Energy waste and device overheating are critical issues in high-performance data centres, where nearly half of the total energy consumed is used for cooling computing devices. This project, under the leadership of Assistant Professor Anton V. Zasedatelev, is intended to develop optical co-processing solutions in collaboration with Picophotonics, Reflekron, and Microsoft.
The project team brings together expertise in quantum optics, semiconductor laser technologies, and high-performance computing to make optical data processing extremely fast and energy-efficient, and consistent with existing telecommunication standards. The goal is to achieve the lowest possible energy consumption per bit of data. Since most global data is transmitted via optical signals, this approach offers a natural and efficient way to process information while reducing energy demands. The project outcomes can drive progress towards more sustainable and cost-effective data centres, thus benefiting all data-driven sectors of the economy.
