I got a great idea during the Christmas break... well I don't know was it that good at the end, but yes, I decided to give my brain some break and I bought a puzzle. And yes, not an easy one, 1500 pieces... I thought I would got some help at home, but no, I basically pull it all together by myself. Took couple of weeks... But I must admit, even though I got a bitt addicted to solve it, it was good and relaxing. So I can warmly recommend to anyone suffering from stress, to try a puzzle as a reliever. 

Congratulations Arun!

Couple of days ago, we were delighted to see our colleague and my co-supervised student Arun proudly defending his PhD Thesis about computater-aided drug design of organic anion transporting polypeptides (OATPs)-utilizing compounds. The discussion with the opponent Prof. Thierry Langer was interesting and they both make it very easy to follow. We are very happy for you Arun, job well done! 🌹 Big congratulations and thank you for the journey with OATPs, I hope we can achieve big things together in the future related to this topic, even though one chapter in your scientific career has been now finished! Thank you also for the very lovely evening party, karonkka! Very memorable indeed!

New Semester, New Students in House

So the spring semester has officially started and we have also gained new students, Madalena and Mafalda from the University of Lisbon. Madalena will work with our PP2A-activators and their prodrugs project and Mafalda with our carnitine prodrugs. Both will work with HPLC method development, bioconversion and cellular uptake studies. Not easy compounds to work with, but I'm sure, as a fifth gradue student, they will do fine! 😎 Also, Simone from Rome will continue with the synthesis of OATP-selective prodrugs, and Juuso, our M.Sc. student with modelling of CAT1 transporter and synthesizing suitable prodrugs towards it. There have been also other requests for the later spring time, let's see who else we will host and from where... 😂