New Paper of Co-Supervision also out

I'm very happy to announce that my co-supervised Ph.D. student Juulia recently got her last paper accepted for her Ph.D. thesis. And this study has also been one of those that has last forever; so-called a tricky one. But lot of learned during the process and at the end, I think we did achieve something, a changed distribution profile for a cancer drug palbociclib by LAT1-utilizing prodrug. The publication is open access, and it was published in a very prestigious journal European Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences (link here). So the next step for Juulia, is to put everything together between the book covers... 😀 Looking forward for the public defense next year, I assume?!?

EFMC-ISCB 2023 symposium in Basel

We are currently attending with Janne (Ph.D. Student) participating in Euroopan Federation of Medicinal Chemistry (EFMC) organized International Symposium  on Chemical Biology (ISCB) in Basel, Switzerland (link). So far, the topics and speeches have been fantastic and we have learned a lot. We also presented 2 posters on our latest results of LAT1-mediated pancreatic prodrug delivery (by Janne, excellent work) and OATP1C1-mediated superior brain drug delivery (by me). Also important networking has been effectively carried out! Overall, nice conference, many thoughts to bring back home! Thank for the organizers, particularly Dr. Yves P. Auberson, we look forward for the next meetings and events!

J Med Chem paper out

So, here it is, what I can proudly present, our recent publication in Journal of Medicinal Chemistry under a title "Targeting Glial Cells by Organic Anion-Transporting Polypeptide 1C1 (OATP1C1)-Utilizing l-Thyroxine-Derived Prodrugs". It should be open access, but since it still is in its early process (no full bibliographic details known yet), it may not be accessible for everyone, but here is the link anyway.

I'm so proud of Arun's and Hamed's work that they did together to make this happen, afterall this is the last paper for Arun's Ph.D. thesis and the first for Hamed's Ph.D. thesis. But of course, I'm very thankful for all co-authors for their great contribution. We did make a press release about it, so perhaps you can read more about the content of the publication from here (link).

A long story short, we made novel prodrugs from thyroxine and thyroxine derivatives that were able to carry anti-inflammatory drugs very effectively into the brain and glial cells within the brain via organic anions transporting polypeptide 1C1 (OATP1C1). And the brain delivery of these prodrugs were many times more efficient that their corresponding parent drugs (anti-inflammatory drugs, of course) but also more efficient than the corresponding L-type amino acids transporter 1 (LAT1)-utilizing prodrugs that we have studied in the past. So big leap forward to for future CNS-drug development! Of course the approach needs fine-tuning and we already are working with it, so more news coming from this topic also in the future! 

Some Sparkling?

Our School of Pharmacy celebrates this year its 50th anniversary and we have had all kind of small events, interviews etc. already during the year 2023. More information about these activities are collected on the websites, but unfortunately they are only in Finnish (link here).

Anyway, I had the privilege to speak last Saturday in the main event, 50th anniversary seminar at the university. So my duties are done for the next 50 years! 😂

Here is the press release about it, but again only in Finnish.

Afterwards, we also had a nice gala dinner together with our Pharmacy Student Association "Fortis" in Musiikkikeskus. A lot of singing of course and few drinks also! 😅

 Thanks Miia for the great photos and all of you dear friends for making the night so memorable!