Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2023!

Dear all, I will use the last post of this year for thanking you all who has been part of our research for your great work and contribution. It has been such a productive year, but also we have enjoyed increasing the knowledge and understanding, improved the methods and most of all working together. For those who are only reading this, you never know, perhaps there will be a day when our roads are crossing. 

But now, enjoy your relaxing holidays and let's hope we will have a great new year ahead of us.

P.S. Yes, I admit, I used my coffee break to do a snowman, with a little help of course, and it was well spent time! Full of energy and ideas now!

One more review

Ok, I know, this is going to be a boring post, one more review article out! And this paper is even little bit out of our focus... But since our dear collaborator, Magdalena from the Medical University of Lodz, Poland, wanted to write about also other approaches to gain enhance brain drug delivery, excluding transporter-utilizing prodrugs, of course I couldn't say no for the invitation. This artcile entitled "Current approaches to facilitate improved drug delivery to the central nervous system" (link) was published in European Journal of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics -journal recently. And the story was pretty much continuation to our earlier review paper published in Neurotherapeutics (link) this year. Santosh prepared once again great figures to support the story, so thank you for all the co-authors for your great contribution!

We are still producing papers for this year

I have been very proud of our students lately. They have worked hard to publish their results and progress in their Ph.D. thesis. Firstly, Katayan and Juulia got their first Ph.D. paper (first for both) accepted in a precious journal called Molecular Pharmaceutics, so congratulations for both! This article Structural Features Affecting the Interactions and Transportability of LAT1-Targeted Pheylalanine Drug Conjugates (link), covered prodrug (substrate) transport studies that were supported by molecular modelling, and it gave us a very important information what kind of substrates L-type Amino Acid Transporter 1 (LAT1) can truly transport through its cavity, and which kind of structures do not favor LAT1-mediated transport. The size and flexibility were crucial factors, but also polarity and prodrug bond were found to have a great effect on the transportability via LAT1. Although, I'm only a co-supervisors for you both, it has been such a joy to work with you and seeing you learning about transporters!

And then Arun also got his second Organic Anion Transporting Polypeptide (OATP)- paper accepted to our special issue in Molecules (link). So congratulation Arun, also! In this paper called Comparative Modelling of Organic Anion Transporting Polypeptides: Structural Insights and Comparison of Binding Modes (link) (open access), Arun generated 11 homology models of different OATP subtypes, including OATP1A2, 1B1, 1B3, 1C1, 2A1, 2B1, 3A1, 4A1, 4C1, 5A1 and 6A1. Then, he did molecular dynamics simulations to understand the interactions of compounds and the distinct OATP subtypes in their binding pockets. With these created models and knowledge we can design better OATP-utilizing compounds in the future, and hopefully find specific interactions, by which also OATP-subtype specific utilization can be acheived. This is highly interesting aim to be achieved, since OATPs have different expression profiles in the brain; e.g., OATP3A1 is selectively expressed in the neurons, OATP2B1 in microglia, and OATP1C1 in astrocytes. So, if we are successful, we could achieve brain cell specific intrabrain targeting by utilizing specific OATP subtypes. 

Pre-Christmas parties

We have had a socially very active November, and that's nice, since it has been very cloudy and grey November this year. Couple of weeks' ago the School of Pharmacy organized the annual Pre-Christmas party; this year we went to the theater, so dinner and a play. It was in Finnish and local comedy, so it was not the best idea for all of us, but then again, the food and company was great!

Last week we also did some bowling, and mainly among with our group. Not everyone were able to participate and there was couple who didn't exactly belong out TTDD-research group, but while we were bowling with 3 tracks, I realized that we are a pretty big group now. We are more than 15 people! One day I was thinking what on earth I did this autumn semester, but over 15 people explains it nicely. A great science of course! 😂

Unfortunately, the bowling was a farewell to Agathe at the same time, as her visit to our group has now come to the end, but then again Giorgio, from the University of Sienna, Italy joined us recently, so one is out, the other one is in.