Some sport and After Dinner

We have been socially active lately! 😀 This time we had a nice early dinner at Andy's place, but the Head-Chef was Santosh and Sous-Chef Ville; they cooked different variations of butter chicken for us. Sounds simple, but it taste totally different, when the ingredients are authentic! And the rest of us brought some desserts, but of course Adela is our official Pastry-Chef! A great apple pie! 

Yesterday, there was also Ice-Marathon in Kuopio. Unfortenately, the heat wave spoiled the experience, but congratulations for Adela, Ville, and Andy for making until the finish line, since not all the participants did. So if you can do that, you can finish your Ph.D. 😂

Congratulation Adela!

The first months of the year is always exciting for students since many foundations announce their grant results. One big funder of pharmaceutical research in Finland is the Finnish Cultural Foundation, and this year we were lucky, since Adela got 1-year grant. So congratulations, Adela! 🌹 Of course, it would have been nice to see also others, who applied, to be successful, but one by one, let's be happy for this one! We also get good news today from other grant types, but let's wait until they are official...

Sport Afternoon

Today, UEF had an official sport afternoon, and all the staff members were allowed to pick up some activity with reduced price or no price if outdoors. We decided to try Megazone laser game, and it was superfun. We were 17, so we had nice 3 teams. I was lucky one to be in a winning red team, as I was one of the worst shooters. 😂 But yes, it was real and sweaty game!

Today was also Laskiainen, I don't know how it even translates (Shrovetide or Pancake Day?!?), but anyway our super-baker Maija did some traditional Pancake Day's buns with jam and whipped cream for us, yammy they were delicious! But thanks for Ville and Santosh for organizing the event, let's see what we come up next time?!?

Why the Increase in Drug Concentration Does Not Always Mean improvved Effects

We are happy to announce that another paper from a very long-lasting project is finally out. This was a collaboration project with Dr. Richard Wheelhouse from the University of Bradford, UK and I cannot even remember the year, when we started it, something around 2014... more or less 10 years ago... Anyway, there were challenges all along the way, but the final conclusion was (now for the second time in a short period) that the increase in drug concentration does not necessarily mean that the pharmacological responses are elevated. And this is very evident with anti-cancer drugs (our vinblastine story posted in January 2024 proved the same), which suffers from many drug resistance mechanisms. So effluxing the drugs out of the cells and trying to inhibit it only, does not solve the problem in many cases. Anyway, if you want to read more about this temozolomide case that was published in European Journal Pharmaceutical Sciences recently, here is the link (should be open access). So the lesson to learn, we need better alkylating agents or combination therapies to improve the apoptosis-inducing effects that temozolomide is able to mediate.

Thank you for all the co-authors!