Krister Wennerberg's Biography

Krister Wennerberg, Group Leader, Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland

Krister Wennerberg is a FIMM-EMBL group leader and the leader of the FIMM High Throughput Biomedicine unit. He received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Uppsala University, Sweden in 1999 and did his postdoctoral training at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Following his postdoc, he worked in a biotech company before taking a group leader position at the Drug Discovery Division of Southern Research Institute in 2006, where he managed an internal drug discovery program and lead an assay development group. In 2010, he joined the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM) at the University of Helsinki as a group leader.
His research is focused on gaining fundamental novel understanding of cancers and their underlying signals and vulnerabilities through both forward and reverse chemical genetics approaches. The former approach is focused on discovery and validation of novel oncology drug targets through the development of molecular probes. In the latter, his team is using collections of defined bioactive compounds, approved and investigational drugs on cancer cells to discover novel personalized therapeutic strategies and to define and understand the molecular mechanisms driving the cancers, their drug responses and mechanisms of resistance.