Due to the current situation in Europe, I decided to have a silent week for the posts of this blog and express my sincerest compassion for the people who are suffering for no reason!
Also our university support for Ukrainian students and staff members:
Being a scientist is actually relatively demanding, quite often it is not enough that you work hard, since if you work too hard and get too tired and stressed out, then you loose your creativity. Therefore, I try to keep good balance between the work and personal lives and enjoy the life outside the science too. And of course being a supervisor, I also recommend that one for my students too. Well, sometimes it is hard to be totally outside of the science as I enjoy the nature a lot, and Mother Nature can surprise me every time, if I just give some space. This week I worked distantly in Lapland (place called Ruka), did some downhill skiing, write a new article and enjoyed the northern lights. I must say that it was a needed week with my family. And I'm full of energy and new ides now! 😎
Last week I finally received the third dose of corona-vaccination, this time Moderna, while the other ones were Pfizer. As a result I was pretty sick for 2 days. Immunity developed, I hope! 😂 Now it feels that I'm basically waiting to hit the omicron, since it is pretty weird that everyone else around me is having it except, me and my family. Or alternatively, we already had, we just didn't notice!
We also had the distant working recommendation until mid of this week at the UEF, and it seems that we are slowly getting back to normal. Of course there is huge number still in Finland and Kuopio, but I hope we are on the top of it now! Nevertheless, students have continued working at the university and we are currently proceeding like a pharmaceutical factory! A lot of new compounds in the pipeline, many under the evaluation, so keep your fingers crossed to hear good new soon! 😄 So even though it may seem a desperate at the moment (see the photo), the spring is coming!
Dear Colleagues,
Among the controlled drug delivery technologies, targeted drug delivery has attracted the attention of researchers, as it comprises the systemic delivery of a drug carrier system to specific cell types, tissues, or organs. Targeted drug delivery systems would mainly be beneficial in diseases such as cancers, which are a leading cause of death worldwide. Advancements in omic sciences, analytical procedures, and high-throughput screening in the last two decades have led to the realization that cancer is more complex than was originally conceived. Numerous challenges impede effective cancer treatment and development of effective drugs such as ineffective therapeutic drug concentrations reaching the tumor site, life-threatening side effects caused by nonspecific tissue distribution of anti-neoplastic agents, and acquired resistance of cancer cells upon chemotherapy that triggers cross-resistance to a wide range of different drugs. The complexity of cancers requires the development of very delicate approaches in the course of the drug discovery pipeline.
In line with the challenges raised by the complexity of cancer, the aim of the present thematic issue is to provide state-of-the-art information on novel drug delivery systems in order to enhance the selective uptake of cytotoxic agents by tumor cells and spare normal cells. In this Special Issue, we invite you to contribute both new basic findings about innovative molecularly targeted cancer therapies and entrepreneurial methods of drug delivery in cancer, and your exploratory or confirmatory studies testing novel nanoparticle-based delivery systems or vaccine design against cancer. We are also interested in your critical contributions about potential pitfalls in cancer targeted drug delivery approaches, leading to a comprehensive overview about the current methods for drug delivery.
Dr. Magdalena Markowicz-Piasecka
Dr. Kristiina Huttunen
Guest Editors
P.S. If you are looking for a more transporter-related special issues, we still have the special issue, edited together with Santosh, called "Transporter-Mediated Drug Delivery" open for submissions until 1st of March, 2022.
