Computational and Medicinal Chemistry by the Lake 2026

This week, we had Computational and Medicinal Chemistry by the Lake 2026 -conference here in Kuopio. Nice topics, although almost all of them were out of my expertise, but it is always good to understand what your collaborators are all about. 😎 I guess, for me, the most important thing was the networking, to see old friends and make new ones! And also our new students, like Joel got the opportunity to participate in the event almost next to your home door, and a bit older ones like Mikko, but also the "old ones" Ville and Andy, got the opportunity to present their posters. The other half of the group will attend another conference in Kuopio in 2 weeks! What a wonderful June!

 

Speeches and Speeches

Janne attended this week to the Annual meeting of European Federation for Pharmaceutical Sciences (EUFEPS) at the University of Naples in Italy, and he was actually selected one of the speakers, to tell his journey with LAT1. Janne was also earlier selected as a part of the EUFEPS Young Section Committee, whose main purpose is to provide support initiatives aimed at young EUFEPS members (in addition to the support for the main board). So good one, Janne!

We also had a little bit sad week, since 4 our staff members said goodbye and stepped into well-deserved retirement (from left to right, Technician Anne, Pharmaceutical Chemistry Lecturer Pekka, Toxicology Lecturer Risto, and Pharmacology Lecturer Anne). Risto wanted to give us the farewell seminar, telling the story of his career, which was indeed very inspiring. He also showed how science was presented back in the old days; unfortunately, the old projector lamp was not that sharp, but on the tble you may see how the posters were done, cutting and gluing the results to the very large paper. 😂

People come and go...

Although the previous post was all about new people joining our group and some leaving and graduating, I have to continue the topic with this post. Yesterday, we had the farewell coffees for Moritz and Ana, who joined us as ERASMUS students in January. Ana did the synthesis of novel PP2A analogs originally with Santosh and later on Mikko jumped into the supervision - big thanks to both of you for the flexibility! Let's hope we have something to continue with! And Moritz worked mainly with OATP2B1-prodrugs, partly continuing Unna's project, but also doing a lot of everything else for which we are also very thankful and hope that will also soon lead to results that can be read from the publication. 😀

And the summer period has officially started, swallows have arrived!