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!