Welcome Prof. Peter Wipf!

We have been honored to receive our second visiting professor, Professor Peter Wipf from the University of Pittsburgh (USA) to the School of Pharmacy (UEF) as a part of ProFi6 funding (Academy of Finland's funding for Finnish universities to support them in strengthening their research profiles). So Peter's aim here is to strengthen our medicinal chemistry excellence to the next level, so not an easy task, I would say, but I'm sure we all are ready to work hard together! Today we had a nice get-together meeting and introduction of the medicinal chemistry that is already done in the house and Peter also introduced what he can offer to us. So thank you all for participating and welcome Peter to Kuopio!

Together with Peter we will also recruit a new junior group leader, who Peter will guide until the top, I guess! 😀 Someone can ask now, did I apply? Unfortunately, not! I probably haven't mentioned yet, but I was selected as a corresponding candidate for strengthening the proteomic expertise in the School of Pharmacy with ProFi6 funding and I will start with that position next month. Basically, nothing changes in my own work as a group leader, I will just focus more on the proteomics with Prof. Tetsuya Terasaki (Japan), who by the way, has already been here almost one year! And of course, I will make sure the the expertise will stay in the house after Tetsuya's return. But despite of that and all the great things that we have already achieved with Tetsuya, I will be heavily involved with synthesis of novel (pro)drugs and be a part of our medicinal chemistry expertise! 💗

Special issue dedicated to transporters

I have probably forgot to mention that I and Santosh are editing a special issue in Molecules journal called "Transporter-Mediated Drug Delivery". Originally the deadline for this issue was at the end of August, 2021, but due to the summer holidays and starting the new semester, the timing was not so good and we decided to continue the submission time with our series editor until 1st of March, 2022. We have already get a few really nice papers and we are expecting to get some more in the near future, from the authors who have already planned to submit to this special issue. But of course we will happy to see any unexpected submission too! So if you have a study of transporter in mind, please, go ahead and think this opportunity! We are not looking so much hypothesis-driven studies, anything that can increase the knowledge of transporters will suit for this issue; pharmacokinetics, drug-drug interactions, drug efficacy or toxicity related to transporters, or even a story of an orphan transporter, those which are not studied thoroughly in the past.

We also contributed to this special issue ourselves, and yesterday, our paper was finally published and released. You can read it from this link (it is open access). So thank you for all the co-authors for your great contribution, and congratulation, especially Santosh, I think this was your first corresponding authorship, and accepted just for you birthday! 😀

Ruska Event by DrugTech Research Community

Our Pharmacy-based research community called DrugTech hosted a seminar series this week (6-8th of September, 2021) in Koli’s staggering scenery. The Ruska event combined both world-class science and expertise together with Koli’s wild landscape and challenged the scientist for new creative thoughts! 

It was such a great feeling to gather together after such a long time and discuss unoffically, however, since not all of my group member were able to attend, I felt little bit guilty... But I promise this was just a first try, there will be plenty of these in the future, I hope! 

New-old Ph.D. student in the team now

A new Ph.D. student Seyedhamed started in the beginning of this month in our team, so welcome Hamed! Actually, Hamed started in a different Ph.D. project at the School of Pharmacy already few years ago, and I also happened to be his co-supervisor. However, the project was really challenging also challenging to get funded, and since from the beginning of September the new Academy project started, it gave me an opportunity to offer a new project for Hamed. Unfortunately, the Ph.D. thesis title changes and everything starts from the beginning, but I'm sure this was a good timing to re-fresh our thoughts on is possible and what is not. Hamed has already a good skills in organic synthetic chemistry, so basically, the methods are the same, only the prepared molecules are different!

So we all hope that you Hamed enjoy the science in our team and we wish you good luck! Let's hope we can take this project to the very end and you will finally graduate as a Ph.D! According to your fumehood, its looking good already, a lot is going on there! 😀