Johanna Ivaksa has been appointed head & vice president of Oncology Research at Orion Corporation (Nasdaq Helsinki: ORNAV), the company disclosed on Monday.

She will join the company on 1 October 2018 and will report to vice president, R&D global head, Therapy Area Oncology, Professor Heikki Joensuu.

As head & VP of Oncology Research, all of oncology discovery will report directly to Ivaksa. She will also act as director of the Orion Research Center for Biotechnology and Translation Research in Turku.

Ivaska currently works as Academy Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Turku. Upon joining Orion Corporation, she will continue working at the university with her internationally recognised research team.

She is an internationally distinguished researcher specialising in the role of cellular changes in metastatic development in cancer. It is believed that her innovative approach to research will provide significant new data on the migration and traffic of cancer cells, which could lead to scientific breakthroughs in biomedicine.