Faculty of Pharmacy on Michael’s Domain

Producing proteins better than the pros

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Congratulations, Laura & Akseli! Your article in Scientific Reports ( https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-77104-3 ) is a solid piece of work that has not only relevance for cardiovascular diseases but also for the work that we are doing on lipedema/lipoedema (and therefore, potentially even for lymphedema, which has been the main focus of our research in the past). There are astonishing similarities between coronary artery disease and lipedema, because both can be regarded as lipid storage disorders.And thanks to Khushbu and Betül for helping Laura produce and purify such a high-quality LCAT protein that worked better than the protein preps that are commercially available! Perhaps much of the secret was the high expression levels that we could reach compared to other systems. For the first time, we tried out HEK293T cells with a custom CHO vector ( pCHOKE-B-LCAT-H6 ), and it worked surprisingly well. pCHOKE-B was assembled from scratch and we incorporated several advancements made over the years compared to regular CHO expression vectors. The vector contains

Innoopeli Prize 2022

Wed, 21 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

We - the steering group of the International Master’s Programme in Pharmaceutical Research, Development and Safety - received the Innoopeli Prize 2022 !The Innoopeli Prize is given for a significant contribution to teaching in our Faculty. Although biased, I think the award is well justified since we offer many new courses, update existing courses, and translate courses from Finnish into English. It’s been heavy lifting, but we can already see some results in the form of really smart and engaged students, which we managed to recruit!From our programme director Leena Hanski: “In January 2021, we started the work as a steering group, with no learning objectives, curriculum, admission criteria, or even website, not to mention a single decision on practical arrangements for running the programme. We still have plenty of work in front of us, but I am convinced we can keep up the pace and make this programme a great place to polish the future stars of pharmaceutical research, development and safety. Our first set of students has been a great source of inspiration and motivation for many of us, and I also want to specifically thank them for their openness and willingness to share their stories, thoughts and expectations.”

Meet the teacher!

Fri, 31 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Almost 30 years after starting my academic career, I started to teach at the Faculty of Pharmacy (without much pedagogic experience and education). Mostly, I teach stuff that I have real-life research experience and expertise with: Recombinant DNA technology, genetic engineering, protein production and purification, and - most notably - protein drugs. Following the University of Helsinki motto Researchers teach, teachers research . Despite my lack of experience, I was part of the Helsinki University “Meet the teacher!” feature, which is aiming at the prospective International Master’s students: https://www.facebook.com/HelsinkiUniversity/posts/10160122296028083