UEF Proof-of-Concept Funding

I totally forgot to post that earlier this month about the nice surprise we got; our consortium with Prof. Tarja Malm (AIV institute) and Prof. Antti Poso (School of Pharmacy) received the UEF Proof-of-Concept funding to develop novel drugs for Alzheimer's Disease. Unfortunately, I cannot reveal too much of the project, since this POC-funding is only a small part of a bigger project initiated by Tarja, but let's hope that during next autumn and with this funding it will open us new avenues for the future! So far we have received really interesting and promising results and it has been a real pleasure to work in this consortium, so I look very positive forwards to what this project can produce. More details can be found from this UEF Press Release (12.6.2020):

New homepages

UEF renewed our web pages a month or so ago, which also forced us to think about how to show ou research to the world since initially, the only service that was offered to the research groups was UEF Connect. It the beginning, this "database" did not show by googling, so it was not that appealing to me at least. Nowadays, google should also find the keys worlds of UEF Connect, but I have huge problems to be mixed with another scientist with the exact same name. Luckily we are working in different fields and universities. But anyway, you can find me only by using my middle name initial "M". And when I tried to feed my name as a keyword,  so that Google could find my connect sites only with first name and sure name, the system administrator removed all the keywords related to my name... :) 

Well, as the UEF Connect doesn't present the research project well (although I have required changes that would serve better research groups), nothing happened. And then suddenly, research groups we offered to have their own WordPress sites. :) So, I of course used this opportunity immediately, although in the meantime I had already set up everything as a sited to the blogger.  But now, I think itäs good to have wider visibility to our research, although it is, of course, double work also. But copy-pasting from another site is not that hard! :)

Anyway, here are the UEF connect sites to our research group and the new WordPress sites. You can decide yourself, which one you prefer and which one you think is more informative! :)

https://uefconnect.uef.fi/henkilo/kristiina.huttunen/

https://sites.uef.fi/drug-targeting/

And of course, after the smart cafe, there was a press release of the smart cafe... :)

Cafe Smart Online

This week I hade the UEF Cafe Smart, which was held due to the time being online. Anne Heikkinen interviewed me for the cancer drug development and Prof. Seppo Ylä-Herttuala about the COVID-19 vaccination development. It was actually really nice to hear Seppo's approach fully explained, since I haven't had time to focus on what is happening in the vaccination field. Although it is not coming to be in our use fast, Seppo estimated earliest at the end of the next year, however, it would guarantee the Finnish people will get one, if other attempts would be sold out from the bigger suppliers. 

So my part with cancer drug development was totally shadowed by Seppo, and that's what I expected. But it was a good reminder (I hope) that despite all the funding that has been offered to develop COVID-19 drugs and vaccinations, not all of us are going to leave all the hard work that we have done so far just to start developing cures for COVID-19. So it's important for everyone to keep in mind that the research in other areas still continues and it is important to keep on supporting also other than COVID-19 related research. 

Anyway, the podcast can be found in the following link, but as said earlier it is in Finnish. 

UEF Smart Cafe 2.6.2020

Summer has finally arrived here, and I've got a wonderful Mother's Day gift earlier in May, a new working bench. I wonder can you actually reduce it in taxation as it is needed for efficient and creative distance work! :)