MCOS services

I have probably mentioned earlier that a couple of years ago, we became part of Biocenter Finland's  Drug Discovery and Chemical Biology (DDCB) consortium (link) platform with a node called Medicinal Chemistry & Organic Synthesis (MCOS) facilities (link), and from this year on, we have also been part of Biocenter Kuopio (link) together with Antti Poso's Drug Design facilities. Officially, the service that we offer includes 1) Synthesis and optimization of novel target-based active compounds; 2) Synthesis of novel transporter-utilizing tissue-, cell-, or organelle-targeted compounds/prodrugs with improved drug delivery at the site of action; and 3) Evaluation of given compound (in- or out-house made) at the desired biological environment (incl. quantitative analysis of drugs as well as desired biomarkers), and this work has been mainly carried out by Janne and Tiina. But it has been very fruitful, since so far, this has already resulted in a couple of papers and new collaborations. 

• A Novel Tertiary Carbamate Prodrug Strategy to Overcome Metabolic Barriers in Oral Ketamine Delivery (link) in ChemMedChem
• Biomimetic porous silicon for rationally designed combination therapy to induce immunogenic cell death (link)  in Nanomedicine and now the lates acceptance:
• Mechanical Activation of Piezo1 by Virus-like Nanospikes to Potentiate STING-driven Macrophage Reprogramming (link provided later) in Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces

There are also many ongoing projects, more than we have resources to do, but it is great to see that our expertise is valued and useful for others too! So a big thank you to Janne and Tiina for taking care of these, among other things!💪

 

New Master Student Heidi has started

During the past week, our latest Master student, Heidi also joined us and started her experimental work of the thesis. She will be working with the Piezo1 project, analyzing the Jedi1 and Jedi2 prodrugs that Andy has synthesized. These are designed to utilize OATP1C1 for their brain and cellular delivery, instead of LAT1, which we recently published. And once reached the target site, they should activate Piezo1 ion channel. Let's see how we proceed with these plans... 😎

And the press release from our SMVT paper also went out last week:

https://www.uef.fi/en/article/new-transport-pathway-shows-promise-for-brain-drug-delivery

FIBTRA virtual symposium

Note, if you are interested, tomorrow there will be a virtual symposium on the main topic of “Present and future of brain tumor modeling and clinical translation”, organized by the Finnish Brain Tumor Research Association (FIBTRA). It will be held in the afternoon, so feel free to sit on the sofa, take some refreshments, and just listen to these amazing speakers. You can get the link upon registration.

Speaking of amazing people, it is nice to be surrounded and supported by fantastic workmates, who also want to cheer you up, when things go wrong... Afterall, we all want to do our best and most of us also want to give our best for the benefit of others as well.