What scientis won't do?

Well, any researcher should NOT travel from Kuopio to Turku and back (roughly 900 km in total) during one day, or put it more precisely, within 18 h. But we did that with Antti Poso, as we were invited to present our nodes (link) (Drug Design & Molecular Modelling for Antti and Medicinal Chemistry and Organic Chemistry by me) at the Biocenter Finland Drug Discovery & Chemical Biology Symposium 2026 yesterday (Thu 8.10.2026) in Turku. Nice event, great to see the folks, but I don't recommend it, especially at this time of year... So the schedule was the following:

05.00 am      Leaving home (by car)

06.15            Changing to Antti's car at Hankasalmi gas station

11.00            Arriving to Turku

11-16            Afternoon symposium & presentations (15 min each)

16.00             Leaving Turku (by car)

21.15             Changing from Antti's car and driving back home alone

22.30             Home-sweet-home 

One more LAT1-paper out!

We also recently got one more LAT1-paper out entitled "Molecular dynamics insights into structural and hydration dynamics of LAT1 bound to ligands and JPH203-induced inward-open arrest" (link). This was the last part of Käti's Ph.D. thesis, and was published in very precious Nature's Communications Chemistry. It was mainly beyond my expertise, and Käti has been working with this for ages, but I was very delighted to see how tightly the group work until the end, and special thanks go to Thales for finalizing it into such a great story! Congratulations to all! 👏

 

Sport Afternoon and others

Today we had the university's traditional sports afternoon (for staff and students), where you can get some discounts on certain events. We have tried to use this time to get together and do some fun with the research group, but also to extend beyond the group boundaries and invite other Pharmaceutical Chemistry staff members. This year, inspired by our "summer camp", we decided to go with a tournament of 3 events; volley ball, yard games Mölkky and King.

So it was a nice afternoon together, but also it has been nice to see happy faces and feel the real thrill of success among the group and beyond. The premium sake was directly from a Japanese brewery, as a celebratory gift for the SMVT-paper. So we need to take good care of it together! 😍 Waiting for the pre-Christmas party...!