This years first paper out

I know it may sound a bit boring that every second post is about new publication release, but then again, that what the science is all about. Bringing your results in front of the scientific and general audience. So this new publication called "Sodium-Dependent Neutral Amino Acid Transporter 2 Can Serve as a Tertiary Carrier for l-Type Amino Acid Transporter 1-Utilizing Prodrugs" and published in Molecular Pharmaceutics journal, was again an additional project and was based on the unexpected findings along with other studies. I think it was around 2017-2018 when we noticed that when exposing the cells to higher pH and then measuring the cellular uptake of our so-called LAT1-utilizing prodrugs, the cellular accumulation increased, and this could not be explained by LAT1-mediated uptake. So together with Johanna and Tiina, we did a lot of different experiments and then I was finally convinced that it must be a carrier from a sodium-dependent neutral amino acid transporter (SNAT)- family. Ahmed and Adela then nicely confirmed that in our cell system (MCF-7 human breast cancer cell line), SNAT2 was the only SNAT highly expressed. And then, 1.5 years ago, I met a great molecular modeller, Thales, who was interested to study the interactions of our prodrugs with SNAT2 protein. And ta-da, we were right; these so-called LAT1-utilizing compounds were also utilizing SNAT2, in addition to some organic anion transporting polypeptides (OATPs)... Well, I felt that this was really important information to all drug designers, that you need to be aware of to which other transporters your designed molecule may have interactions, since afterall that defines its pharmacokinetic properties and distribution in the body. Anyway, I'm really happy it's now out after so many years of work and I'm really thankful for all the co-authors for their contribution! It's a great start for this year!

5th Scandinavian Bloo-brain Barrier Network (SBBN) Symposium 2023

Wow, what a day or two days! We have had such a great 5th Scandinavian Blood-brain Barrier Network (SBBN2023) Symposium here at Kuopio with such fantastic speakers, poster presenters and exhibitors. Of course organizing such a big event take a lot of time and effort, starting already one year ago, and I must admit that there were couple of sleepless nights during this week, but after all it was so much fun and every spent second well worth of it! Of course, it was not a one woman's show, there was lot of people organizing the event from the planning phase until the very end to the event side, and there is no words to describe my gratitude for all of your hard work! This event also showed how great and well-together-functioning team we currently have! I'm very proud of you! Initial figures are posted today, but I'm sure better ones will follow!

New semester has started

Now the spring semester is fully going on and all our ERASMUS students, who were here already before the Christmas, are back; Pablo and Huihui from Spain, Giorgio from Italy, Petra from Czechia, and Heinileena our local Master Student - Did I already forgot someone? 😍 In addition, the new ones have arrived, now firstly Mara from Germany and more will follow later, at least one from Poland and two from France. Most of these above mentioned student are working with synthesis projects, so we have a great atmosphere in the synthesis labs at the moment and we are producing more compounds than ever. That creates a bit of a bottle neck to the next phase - evaluating the properties of these compounds. Luckily, we have a good balance of helping hands around, Santosh, Andy and Hamed supervising the students in the synthesis lab and Janne, Adela, Tiina and Sema evaluating those compounds in the bioanalysis lab (in addition to the supervision of the student in the bioanalysis lab). And Ville, your input in modelling of the compounds that we are producing is very crucial one, even though it must felt like an alien in this group! 😍

Happy New Year!

The new year has started greatly, the first paper for this year was just accepted for publication couple of days ago! But more about that one later, once it is out to be read. 

Soon we will have the 5th Scandinavian Blood-Brain Barrier Network (SBBN) Symposium in Kuopio, in couple of was actually, 19th and 20th of January, 2023. There is still few days left for registration, if you are interested. We will have great speakers from around Europe talking about brain drug delivery methods and models to study brain diseases. The more detailed program can be found from the official event webpages:

https://sites.uef.fi/sbbn-symposium-2023/

So Happy New Year, and hopefully we will see soon at the event site!