Professor and world leader in protein phosphatase biology in cancer. The Westermarck lab combines advanced mass spectrometry, proteomics, systems biology, cancer biology and human patient material to discover novel mechanistic principles on how protein phosphorylation networks contribute to human cancer development and therapy resistance.

His laboratory discovered the oncogenic function of protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) inhibitor protein CIP2A (Cell 2007 ), and has contributed to many groundbreaking discoveries of relevance of PP2A and other phosphatases in cancer (Sci Transl Med 2018 , Cell 2021, EMBO Mol Med 2024). Most recently they revealed the structural and mechanistic basis of how CIP2A inhibits PP2A and its importance on triple negative breast cancer tumorigenesis ( Nat Commun 2023). Prof. Westermarck is an elected member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters and has been awarded many national and international awards. He has many international patents based on their therapy target and biomarker studies, and their research results have been outlicenced to international pharma. He is also a founder of a cancer diagnostics start-up company Thestra Ltd., and serves as a board member of Finnish Drug Discovery Center LTD and SAB member for phosphatase targeting pharma company Anavo BV. These highlight his ability to perform translational research with direct translational relevance.