34^th BioCity Symposium:

TRANSFORMING DRUG DEVELOPMENT FOR TOMORROW

28–29 August 2025
Mauno Koivisto Centre, BioCity, Turku, Finland

The 34^th BioCity Symposium focuses on drug development across a range of disease groups and on various drug modalities. Despite of significant breakthroughs in medicine, there are still numerous conditions for which there are no curative treatments, or even therapies that would effectively slow down the disease progression. Therefore, novel drug targets need to be identified and new drugs need to be discovered to target the disease-driving mechanisms. In this symposium, we will focus on academic drug discovery and on mechanisms how the promising new compounds identified in  academic setting can be converted to commercially viable industrial drug development programs. The symposium will also cover exciting new approaches to select the most suitable patient populations for the emerging therapies. 

Confirmed Speakers

Anniina Färkkilä, University of Helsinki, Finland
Carmen Galan, University of Bristol, UK
Nathanael S. Gray, Stanford University, USA
Christian Heinis, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland
David Leppert, GeNeuro SA; University Hospital Basel, Switzerland
Richard Marais, Oncodrug Ltd, UK
Silvia Marsoni, IFOM, Italy
Maarit Merla, Finnish Drug Discovery Center Ltd, Finland
Francesca E. Morreale, The Francis Crick Institute, UK
Hélder A. Santos, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Eric Vivier, Innate Pharma; Aix-Marseille University, France

Organizing committee

Laura Airas
Maija Hollmén
Reko Leino
Olli Pentikäinen
Jessica Rosenholm
Jukka Westermarck (chair)

Original artwork by Tinni Snåre