Janne's 2. publication out!

We got really goods new last week and the final process was very fast, so the publication number 2 for Janne's Ph.D. thesis is now out! Congratulations Janne and thanks for all the co-authors for your great contribution! 🌹 The publication under the title "The L-type amino acid transporter 1 enhances drug delivery to the mouse pancreatic beta cell line (MIN6) (link, open access)" was published in prestigious European Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences and continued Janne's work on LAT1 transporter expression and utilization in pancreatic beta-cells. So from the 1. publication's tissue level, we proceeded on the cellular level. 

Personally I find the correlation between in vitro cellular uptake and in vivo pancreatic accumulation of our LAT1-utilizing prodrugs (of several non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) as the most fascinating result, but of course Janne made great work with the prodrugs, and showed that they were able to revert cytokine-induced effects on insulin secretion, and balance other biomarkers, identified in global proteomic analysis that were measured by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS). So great work and lots of things learned for the future!

New semester, new students

Since the early September, we have have several new students in our group. From the ERASMUS student this year we have Simone from the University of Rome (Italy) working with Santosh on the synthesis of new OATP-utilizing prodrugs for brain-targeting purposes; Maria from the University of Barcelona (Spain) working with the HPLC methods and stability and cellular uptake studies of novel metformin derivatives targeted to cancer cells; and Olivia from the Aix-Marseille University (France), working with Hamed on the evaluation of OATP-utilizing brain-targeted prodrugs. And then we also have Lina, already a postdoc, but studying additionally in a toxicology master programme and performin a master thesis with us by comparing the NMR and MS metabolic profiles in different set-ups. Not to forget that we are supervising with Adela and Aaro one master student Milka, and with Ville another master students Juuso, who should also start soon the modelling and Daria, who is already finishing her modelling studies. Did I forget someone... most likely yes, and there will be new students joining us later this year... 😎

RUSKA, The DrugTech Research Community's Annual Autumn Meeting

We have have now couple of years our research community's DrugTech's annual meeting called Ruska (translation is something like autumn colors in nature) in Koli, The Northern Karelia's National Park. This year was a bit special and even the name of the event was called "Changing landscape in drug research". This most likely referred to the change of the leader, from Prof. Arto Urtti to Prof. Antti Poso, but we also enjoyed couple of presentation of new members. I also stepped down from the board member duties, while the new board stepped in. Unfortunately, I was able to stay only for the first day and evening, but I enjoyed every moment. Of course, I was also the only one representing the group, mainly because everyone else have been somewhere else in the conferences during this autumn. Adela visited the 14th course on the BBB in CNS Drug Development in Leiden on October 2 - 4 (link). And Santosh is going to Cape Town within couple weeks for the joint meeting of the 23rd International Congress of the International Society for Ethnopharmacology and the 2nd International Congress of the African Phytomedicine Scientific Society (ISE-APSS 2024) conference and for the follow-up research visit in Pretoria in South Africa. So our research has been widely presented in front of different audience this autumn.

A humble Thank You for Jane & Aatos Erkko Foundation!

I’m deeply grateful to the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation for awarding a significant grant for our research! At the same time, I’m super-thrilled to be able to continue our project of increasing the delivery of creatine to improve energy homeostasis in several brain diseases, which has also been the main focus in Adela's Ph.D. thesis project. We are also now able to leverage the creatine research  into the diseases of the heart muscle, and I'm perhaps able to hire a new Ph.D. candidate...

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