Welcome Santosh!

We have been lucky, and we have gained a new postdoc or perhaps we can call him a senior scientist already, to our group, welcome Santosh Adla! We have tried to get funding together with Santosh for more than 4 years, and this spring we were finally lucky and Santosh received a fellowship granted by the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic, based on his Marie-Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) unsuccessful, but still a very good application. So congratulate Santosh! 

Of course, we are currently facing some restrictions (2 weeks' home lockdown) before we can start working at the university, but it was a good idea to come to Kuopio as soon as possible, now when the COVID-19 numbers are arising, and especially in Czech, from where Santosh arrived here. So I'm already looking forward to seeing what all we can get done during the next 2 years. At least some novel transporter-utilizing neuron-targeted compounds according to the research proposal, but I'll tell you more about them, once the projects proceed!

Other things happened during the past week: one new manuscript submitted, one manuscript received positive feedback, and by a revision, we can re-submit it, one rejected manuscript, one new submitted grant application, and one unsuccessful funding decision. Mixed feelings, as you may guess, but I must say that a pretty average performance for any scientist and I should say that we are in a good balance! :)

BNCT - Boron Neutron Capture Therapy

Our group has been privileged to be part of the big Finnish consortium, who is studying boron carriers to treat cancers with a neutron beam. The consortium's head is the University Lecturer, Adj. Prof. Filip Ekholm from the University of Helsinki, and several research groups have been given their input to this big project, including Prof. Jarkko Rautio's group from the UEF, A. Prof. Anu J. Airaksinen's group from the University of Turku and Academy Research Fellow Mirkka Sarparanta's group from the University of Helsinki, to name few. We recently published our first paper, in which we studied glucoconjugates as boron carriers to inhibit the growth of head and neck cancers. These glucoconjugates are using glucose transporter 1 (GLUT1) for their delivery into the cancer cells and due to the very high expression of GLUT1 in cancer cells, it is assumed that the given compounds are mainly delivered to these target sites. With a neutron accelerator, the neutron beam radiation is then applied for the tumor site. When the non-radioactive boron-10 (10B) absorbs or captures the neutron it starts to emit high-energy particles that are able to kill the cancer cells, also the adjacent cancer cells that have enough accumulated 10B. Thus, this therapy is able to spare the healthy cells, if 10B atoms are not sufficiently accumulated into them. With the future prospective, when these neutron accelerators are getting more and more common in the hospitals, we believe that this methodology can be one of the most promising ones in the treatment of cancer, at least in the case of the very challenging cancers, such as different brain tumors. 

Here is the link for our first publication and we expect another one coming up soon! 

New semester has started this week

This week, the semester at the UEF officially started. And this year we had to take into account the prevailing situation and for example, our Opening Ceremony was held online. I must admit that this was the first time I was able to attend, as I watched it afterward at home on the couch! :)

UEF Opening ceremony 2020-2021 (link to You Tube)

The on-going semester will be in all ways hold in online, since all the possible teaching will be given online and needed contact teaching will be done in small groups. We for example had our yearly FinPharmaNet Meeting intended for Ph.D. students and their supervisors successfully online with poster presentations and panel discussion. And the main topic was, as you can guess, COVID-19 and the situation with the drug development.

However, it still makes one wonder, why on earth we make so much effort to protect each other, since students seem to have lively nightlife in relatively large groups and in relatively small places, like bars... :) Moreover, the restrictions concerning symptomatic children affects the most of the people at the working age. The school has been going less than a month and in our household, this is already a third time when we have symptoms! I wonder how much is going to affect learning, not only in our case, but overall nationwide.

Well let's just hope there will be a vaccine soon available, so we can go on and continue our lives!