This spring's greatest endeavor

Although there have been many review paper's that we have published recently, there was one that I started to plan already during the COVID-19 outbreak. But for some reason, I never had time to start writing, although my co-authors did some great background work during the spring 2020. Then, in the beginning of this year, I was invited by Prof. Pardridge to write about this topic in my mind, to a special issue called "Advanced Blood-Brain Barrier Drug Delivery" in Pharmaceutics journal along with other great scientist, so I couldn't say no. 😀 So I had to put it all together to achieve the following paper that has been now published. 

Link to the special issue

I must admit that the result was something else that I had originally in my mind, but it, once again, opened my eyes how much work there still is to improve the brain drug delivery, and how less we really understand about the complexity behind it. But anyway, greatest thank-you goes to the co-authors; Santosh for the great figures, Magdalena for the compiling the tables, and Johanna for the original literature research. This really was one of my greatest personal achievement during the past 6 months.

Link to our review (open access)

Interactive week

June is typically good time to organize all kind of events in Finland and therefore it is a popular month also to have scientific conferences. This week there was 3 overlapping events, so I had to choose those in which I was invited to have a presentation or be part of the organizing team. 😀 In the beginning of this week we took a bus from Kuopio (6.00 am) and drove to Sastamala to hotel Ellivuori, where the  16th Annual FinPharmaNet meeting was held. I'm must say that it was a very nice meeting and gave us a lot of ideas for the next 17th Annual FinPharmaNet meeting, which will be in turn somewhere in Kuopio, organized by us! Among the scientific presentations, there was enough time for discussion and also for un-official activities, like having a walking tour to historical places in Ellivuori. We also ended up having a mini-golf tournament after 9.00 pm! 😂 And of course UEF bet University of Helsinki, and Turku! 

The rest of this week we had a Chemical Sciences in Biological Challenges (click link for more information) conference here in Kuopio. Three days of very interesting presentations in chemistry, biology and everything between. However, I must admit that after sitting for 5 full days, I look forward on how these conference practices develop, since so heavy sitting cannot be our future. Treadmill to the auditoriums, perhaps? 😀

New Metformin Publication out!

I have totally forgot that we recently published another metformin prodrug paper called "Structural Comparison of Sulfonamide-Based Derivatives That Can Improve Anti-Coagulation Properties of Metformin" in International Journal of Molecular Sciences.

 

In this paper (open access, link here), we have studied with our Polish collaborators the anti-coagulation properties of novel metformin sulfonamide prodrugs that were made in our lab. This was the first study, in which we were able to show that our compounds have significantly elevated glucose utilization in cells, similarly to metformin. Some of the studied compounds also affected beneficially the coagulation parameters, including factor X and antithrombin III activity. We were once again able to understand what kind of structural changes induces what kind of effects and there was, like always, a very thin border between very effective anti-coagulation effects and toxic, cell viability affecting effects.

However, the main finding was, that now we can combine with structural design potential bi-directional activity; anti-hyperglycemic and  anti-coagulant properties to metformin prodrugs or derivatives. Our part (the syntheses) were mainly carried out by our great technician Tiina, so thank you Tiina for your hard work, and also thank you all the co-authors for your great contribution! 

Exellent Financial Secretary Has a Key Role

I have always said that I couldn't carry out my research without an excellent financial secretary that I have been eligible to have. There are several projects with different sum, different ending times, and different rules, going on all the time, so no wonder that mistakes happens. Afterall, we all are only humans. Recently, I was informed that I may loose already granted funding just because I haven't started to use it within given time. First thoughts were that this must be a mistake, perhaps a wrong person, but no, it was me and my project. A mixture of many things in the past, when I had replacing financial secretary for one academic semester. Miscommunication, human error, and the ball was rolling. Luckily, the Sigrid Juselius Foundation had understanding to the situation and the error can be fixed in the future. 

 

So I'm very grateful to this prestigious foundation for the precious research funds and backing up the researcher who are lost in the financial jungle! I'm also thankful for our university's financial department for taken this example seriously and as a platform to improve their performance and support to us, the scientist, in the future. So at the end, lucky ending, but couple of not-so-well slept nights by several people... Thus, it is time to enjoy the upcoming weekend and summer! Also other great things happened during the week, e.g., amazing feed-back x 3 from our review, and thank you flowers from the leaving ERASMUS students. Perhaps, they will come some day back to Kuopio. The students always thank us for having encouraging atmosphere to make the mistakes and learn from them. And that's my personal philosophy, don't be afraid to fail, be afraid not to try! I guess it was first said by Michael Jordan.