Academy Research Fellow Report

I can't believe but my 5-years' long Academy Research Fellow Project that started in 2015 ended at the end of March. It was already extended by my maternity leave and due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And as expected, at the end I needed to compile a relatively profound report to Academy of Finland. First I thought that I really didn't achieve anything special, but then I read the original plan and started to fill the form and to my surprise, I realized that wow, this project was very successful! I guess the downgrading feeling came from the fact that I needed to do a lot of adjustments by the wishes of the hired Ph.D. students. And I kept having this positive problem that  my Ph.D. student got a lot of personal grants, which meant that I needed to hire new ones to keep the budget in the balance! 

During the 5 years, I was able to pay a salary to 8 persons working at some point in the project, in addition to my own salary.

we had 1 Ph.D. graduation and 3 more to come in the next 1-2 years. 7 graduated M.Sc. students and 7 ERASMUS student were working in the project. 4 Predoctoral and 2 postdoctoral visiting researchers were also working in the project.

We achieved 20 fabulous publications! 

A great amount of external funding was also received, not only granted to me, but also to my Ph.D. students.

In the summary of the report I wrote:

In this project, it was studied if LAT1-utilizing prodrugs can improve the drug delivery into the brain and inside the brain. It was found out that LAT1 is expressed both in neurons as well as in glial cells in addition to the BBB. Therefore, the prepared LAT1-prodrugs were delivered effectively across the BBB into their target brain cells, where they released their active parent drugs. It was also demonstrated that the pharmacological effects of the LAT1-prodrugs were improved due to the increased drug delivery and brain-targeting in vitro and in vivo. Thus, the outcome of the drug therapies of many different brain diseases can be improved with LAT1-prodrug approach in the future, which can have a great impact on the healthcare costs of the aging population.

Let's just hope that I can take this project to the next level on continue to explore the fascinating field of transporters.