Minna Hankaniemi wants to defeat viruses and stop pandemics with her inventions

“Yes,” Academy Research Fellow Minna Hankaniemi answers immediately when I ask whether she thinks that she is an inventor.

Hankaniemi continues that Tampere University’s mission is to develop society and education. Her role in fulfilling the mission is to invent vaccine technologies and vaccine manufacturing methods that are more effective in terms of both impact and cost.

Even though Hankaniemi’s current inventor position and goals are clear, chance played a role when she ended up on her path. While studying cell and molecular biology at the University of Jyväskylä and writing her master’s thesis at the University of Helsinki, she worked on adenovirus vectors. These vectors can be utilised, for example, in vaccines.

“I ended up working for a couple of vaccine companies and noticed that the vaccine technologies they were using were not optimal in terms of efficiency and cost-effectiveness,” Hankaniemi says.

Hankaniemi returned to the academia in order to improve those technologies. She is currently working as an Academy Research Fellow at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology.

She is dismayed by the current situation where vaccines are developed and manufactured using outdated and expensive systems instead of investing in research and product development. With new inventions, investments would quickly pay for themselves.

For example, influenza vaccines are still largely produced in eggs containing an embryo, as has been the case for more than 70 years. Using a needle, the viruses are injected one by one in eggs to grow, from which they are then collected, purified, and inactivated. That is a very slow, laborious, and expensive process.

The slow manufacturing method also reduces the effectiveness of influenza vaccines because the type of virus against which the vaccine will be developed must be decided more than six months before the flu season begins. In the meantime, the viruses have plenty of time to mutate.

“In our research group, we are developing vaccines for quick mass production. This also means that we can rapidly modify existing vaccines as needed, providing broader-spectrum and longer-term protection against the prevailing viruses,” Hankaniemi says.

Think about what you could commercialise and with whom

The definition of an invention is that it must be unique or original and an improvement on existing products or methods. Hankaniemi’s inventorship is not only confirmed by herself but also by numbers. She is involved in four patents as an inventor. She has also filed the same number of invention disclosures. Whether those will also become patents is more complicated. As a rule, applying for a patent is an expensive and lengthy process that requires the help of a patent attorney.

“Tampere University’s innovation services also have a competent expert team that provides support for invention notifications and patent applications, meaning that we do not need to dwell on these matters alone,” Hankaniemi points out.

Of course, all research cannot be patented. However, Hankaniemi thinks that researchers for whom the matter could be relevant and within the realm of possibilities should think well in advance about what could be the patentable thing in their research.

“Patenting also offers one way of making research investments benefit society,” Hankaniemi says.

When patenting is considered, it would be a good idea to talk to commercial parties and find out their points of view. In other words, researchers should be able to find out which partners would be able to utilise the patent commercially and thus also interested in supporting the patent application process financially.

“Vaccines, for example, must always be clinically tested first and it is expensive. That is why pharmaceutical companies usually do not take the risk of furthering a vaccine product unless the technology is protected in a way that will also allow the company to have a share of the intellectual property rights,” Hankaniemi explains.

Hankaniemi is currently working on a vaccine development project for which she has received Research to Business funding from Business Finland. An excellent point of the funding is that 40–60 per cent of the money can be used to determine the most optimal commercialisation route for the coronavirus vaccine technology developed by Hankaniemi’s group. The funding also covers, for example, the time it takes to write a patent application and the fees for patenting the inventions.

“We are currently developing vaccine technologies based on protein-based and virus-like particles that have been shown to provide a better immune response and are safer than vaccines based on traditional vaccine technologies. We have several ideas about what kind of patents we could apply for with this new technology,” Hankaniemi explains.

Finland could make vaccines an export product if it so decides

In addition to improved hygiene, we owe our well-being and the fact that we can live so freely to vaccines. The many deadly diseases vaccines have eradicated is one of the finest medical discoveries. Hankaniemi is inspired by the possibility that most diseases and their after-effects could be prevented.

“What motivates me the most is the goal of making vaccines more available to low-income countries. Routine vaccination programmes that are self-evident to us, such as pertussis and measles vaccinations, may not be completed there, which can have devastating consequences,” Hankaniemi points out.

Hankaniemi also talks about the critique that patents can prevent especially vaccines from being distributed evenly around the world. She would rather turn the critical eye at political decisions – or at political decisions that have not been made.

“If the government were to invest in vaccine development and the patenting of vaccine technologies and manufacturing methods, it would be a sensible investment for the future. Finland could be self-sufficient in vaccines,” she says.

Hankaniemi also emphasises that already in the basic research phase, the focus should be on developing vaccine technologies that enable more efficient mass production and that the vaccines being developed would not need cold storage. Both complicate the success of global vaccine distribution.

“We already have all the necessary know-how in Finland,” she says.

“Vaccines could be our new export product, and Finland could be a country that distributes and sells vaccines. That would be sensible business especially in the current world situation. Decision-makers now need policies and the courage to think outside the box,” Hankaniemi adds.

Text: Sari Laapotti
Photos: Jonne Renvall