Rate My Professor Tapio Visakorpi

Tapio Visakorpi, MD, PhD, serves as Vice President for Research at Tampere University since 2022. Previously, he was Vice President for Research at the former Tampere University of Technology, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology at Tampere University, and Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences at the University of Tampere. Appointed Professor of Cancer Genetics at the University of Tampere in 2002, he earlier held the position of Docent of Cancer Biology in 1996. Visakorpi has led and coordinated numerous national and international research projects and occupied key positions of trust in the development of research infrastructures and funding over more than a decade. He leads the Molecular Biology of Prostate Cancer research group as part of the Prostate Cancer Research Center at Tampere University in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology.

Visakorpi's research focuses on the molecular mechanisms of prostate cancer, including androgen receptor signaling, gene amplifications and fusions, non-coding RNAs, RNA-binding proteins, and interactions between cancer cells and the tumor microenvironment such as immunosuppressive myeloid cells. His seminal contributions include the discovery of in vivo amplification of the androgen receptor gene in progressing human prostate cancer (Visakorpi et al., 1995), microRNA expression profiling in prostate cancer (Porkka et al., 2007), and identification of TMPRSS2:ERG fusion as a subgroup marker (Saramäki et al., 2008). Recent publications encompass disruption of androgen receptor-cofactor interactions by FUS/TLS (Brooke et al., 2026), protein-coding genes associated with metastatic prostate cancer (Sattari et al., 2025), and single-cell transcriptomics highlighting club-like cell interactions with myeloid cells (Kiviaho et al., 2024). With 294 research outputs, he has served on 10 editorial boards, supervised doctoral candidates, acted as opponent in 12 dissertations, and held 46 positions of trust in funding organizations alongside 37 in academic communities. Visakorpi has been a member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters since 2007.