Keyword: Institute of Biomedicine

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.

Despite of continuous development in breast cancer treatments, metastases of the most aggressive breast cancer types are still a significant and growing medical problem. Together with a research group at Michigan University, the group of Professor Jukka Westermarck at Turku Bioscience Centre recently received funding from the US Department of Defense for the development of novel treatment strategies for breast cancer metastases.

The virologists at the University of Turku have followed the spread of the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus closely since the beginning of the year. Laboratories in Turku received the first genes of the new virus in February and, ever since, researchers have strived to solve the mysteries of the pathogen only the size of 120 nanometres.

World leading diabetes research foundation JDRF from the United States has granted the University of Turku three-year funding for its PAMP project (Pathogen Associated Molecular Patterns) with the total sum of over €520,000.  

Infectious disease scientists identified strains of group A streptococcus that are less susceptible to commonly used antibiotics, a sign that the germ causing strep throat and flesh-eating disease may be moving closer to resistance to penicillin and other related antibiotics known as beta-lactams.