Research visit in Odense

Last week I had a chance to do a small research visit to the University of Southern Denmark, SDU, in Odense, hosted by Prof. Carsten Uhd Nielsen and sponsored by the last pieces of the NordicPOP funding. I had already sent a good library of our compounds for testing after the summer, and so we were already able to see and discuss about quite nice results. I also had time to participate in the experiments in the lab, and that was fun for such a long time.💥

We also had planned the Ph.D defense for the same trip, so I served as an external evaluator in Sebastian Jakobsen,'s dissertation in one day entitled "Searching for SNAT2 Inhibitors - Strategies for Identifying Inhibitors of Amino Acid Transporters". You can imagine what our collaborative publication (hopefully) will be in the future! 😂 Anyway, very nice research visit in a very modern research environment. We should do more of these, and luckily, the NordicPharmaTrain that I mentioned earlier this semester, will offer some opportunities. 

Metformin paper out!

We have recently also received acceptance of our latest metformin paper entitled "Enhanced Polarity of Sulfonamide Metformin Derivatives Increases Cellular Uptake and Apoptosis-Inducing Effects in Human Breast Cancer Cells (link)". This paper has been recently published in Molecular Pharmaceutics, but it is still waiting to get the official bibliographic data. The best news is that we also got our covert art accepted, but let's celebrate that one later, once it is officially out. Anyway, in this paper, we were able to show, for the first time, that our novel metformin derivatives indeed utilize OCT1 and/or OCT3 (organic cation transporter 1 or 3) for their cellular internalization. However, the amount of the derivative, especially if they behave as prodrugs and release metformin, was not the determinant for the anti-apoptotic effects. In turn that raises from the mechanism of action that each derivative induces, which may vary and most importantly can be pleiotropic. Nevertheless, this was first paper for Ville (the cover art king) for his Ph.D. thesis and it involved efforts from our visiting students, Daria and Soumeya, which we are extremely proud of.

We have a new group member!

Although she has been a member of our group for already 1.5 months, and visited us earlier as an ERASMUS student, I think it is appropriate to introduce her one more time, Judith Glaser from Germany, welcome to our research group as a Ph.D. student! Judith's Ph.D. studies will be mainly focused on in vitro analysis, including cellular uptakes of selected compounds (our own prodrugs) and their effects on the cells, studied by various analysis methods. The main topic will most likely be around cancer cell-targeting, but letäs see how the projects progresses... 😎 More updates perhaprs later...!!!

Sport Afternoon 2025

This week, we had our biannual sports afternoon for students and staff members at the university. We decided to do something fun together, and went to mini-golf. The weather was bright but chilly, and one was barely able to put on without warm gloves. As there were so many of us, we decided to compete as teams against each other. So the average stroke per line per team member after 18 holes. I must admit we were pretty close to each other, and every team had an average stroke of less than 5! 😎 Anyway, nice time together with our group members, students, but also extended members, meaning other staff at the Pharmaceutical Chemistry discipline.  

P.S. Last days or evenings have been a great time for anyone visiting Kuopio long or short time, since the Auroras have been pretty active and easily visible.