[2][3] In 1989 Saksela obtained his MD and PhD from the University of Helsinki under the supervision of Kari Alitalo.
In 1991 Saksela worked as a postdoctoral fellow with David Baltimore at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and then followed him to the Rockefeller University.
[1] Saksela and coworkers developed during the spring of 2020 a patent-free COVID-19 vaccine, which uses an adenovirus as a delivery system for genetic information to trigger the production of the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2.
Later in the year Saksela co-founded Rokote Laboratories with researchers from the University of Eastern Finland to develop a nasal spray that could be used to administer the COVID-19 vaccine.
[4][5][6] In 2002 Saksela was awarded the Anders Jahre Prize for Young Scientists by the University of Oslo for his research on Aids.