This year BioCity Symposium is arranged on-site in Mauno Conference Centre, BioCity, together with InFLAMES Research Flagship 25–26 August 2022, with the title Solution is in Immunity. Registration is now open until 11 August 2022.
The coronavirus launched a pandemic, but also a wave of new research. In spring 2020, most virologists around the world started to study the new, unknown virus. The challenge was also taken up at the University of Turku and Turku University Hospital (Tyks). Eighteen months into the pandemic, the number of international medical publications related to the virus in PubMed is already around 170,000, which is a truly exceptional number.
A new Finnish study shows that 180 health care workers who had received two doses of the Pfizer and Biontech vaccine have very good antibody responses against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The immune response was as strong against the alpha variant (formerly the UK variant) but was somewhat decreased against the beta variant (formerly the South Africa variant).
Although vaccination programmes against pertussis are very effective in Europe, new Finnish study shows that the disease is still very common among middle-aged adults in various European countries. At the same time, the results show that the disease is underdiagnosed as the annually reported figures are considerably lower than those discovered in the study.
A research group at the University of Turku has led the development of a new method to evaluate vaccine safety. The new method may significantly reduce the use of animal testing in the vaccine industry.
This year, the Elias Tillandz prize for the best scientific paper published in 2019 in BioCity Turku has been awarded to Academician Sirpa Jalkanen and her research group.
Consuming the combination of fish oil and probiotic food supplements modulate the composition of gut microbiota in overweight and obese pregnant women, reveals a new study conducted at the University of Turku, Finland. The same study shows that gut microbiota composition and function is not related to gestational diabetes.