Where are my hours lost?!?

Past week has been intense! Even though my calendar didn't look as bad as it could be, somehow I felt really unproductive. So did some calculations... For administrative stuff, and for this I count sitting in the board meeting, like Faculty Council of Health Sciences, Steering Committee of School of Pharmacy, fixing IT issues, in total 4 h. Then for teaching, including Bachelor of Science seminars, meetings with the students, planning how to develop the next semester's teaching, developmental discussion of Doctoral Programme in Drug Reasearch, in total 7 h. Continued with supervising and research activities related meetings, 5 h. So 40% of the official working time, I have been sitting in different places. And I guess this is actually pretty nice number, leaving 60% of my working time to do everything else, but then again if you count all the unofficial discussion and supervising and paying bills, answering emails to students, reading writings, etc. etc. no wonder that I wasn't able to accomplish the task that I was hoping to do, finalize the review that I was asked to write. Luckily I still have time to write it, but do I ever get used to all the ad-hoc tasks that I'm supposed to do every day?!? I hope your week was more productive! 😀 And I hope some day my all these ad-hoc activities will pay somehow back! 😎

Scandinavian blood-brain barrier network symposium 2024

I can’t believe that 1 year has past by since we held the previous SBBN symposium in Kuopio. This time, the turn was at the Copenhagen site, and it was greatly organized by Prof. Birger Brodin and Dr. Christoffer Bundgaard at Lundbeck. There were 5 of us from our group participating, including me, Adela, Andy, Hamed, and Janne, and we had such a great time and wonderful networking with old and new colleagues! Looking forward to the next meeting, perhaps in Uppsala 2025. 

New Year, New Results

Happy New Year 2024! Let's start with new results, or maybe they are really old one but finally published! 😂 So just before Christmas we got another paper accepted in a journal called Chemico-Biological Interactions. In this paper untitled "Amino acid derivative of probenecid potentiates apoptosis-inducing effects of vinblastine by increasing oxidative stress in a cancer cell-specific manner" (link to open access publication) we prepared a novel derivative of probenecid (a drug used to treat gout and hyperuricemia). With this novel derivative, which was more effectively delivered into the cancer cells than its parent (probenecid), we were able to improve the chemotherapeutic effects of vinblastine. Originally, the aim was to block the efflux of vinblastine out of the cancer cells, since our novel compounds was designed to inhibit efflux inhibitors, but in this study we found out that the interactions of this novel compound with other nutrient transporters (in addition to LAT1 that it primarily used) was the main reason for its apoptosis increasing effects together with vinblastine. And curiously, one reason was the increased oxidative stress in the target cells, which we found was a result from a decrease in glutathione, an endogenous anti-oxidant production, due to the inhibition of essential amino acids via the nutrient transporters that the novel compound restricted. Complicated but simple! 😁

So good start for the new year! I wish a happy and successful year to all of you!