Keyword: drug development

Minister of Family Affairs and Social Services Krista Kiuru signed an agreement on the establishment of the national Drug Development Centre (Kansallinen lääkekehityskeskus Oy) on Friday, 4 February 2022. The establishment of the national Drug Development Centre in Turku will promote competitive drug development, and it will serve the researchers in the whole country, for example in universities, research centres, and hospitals.

InFLAMES (Innovation Ecosystem based on the Immune System) is a Finnish research flagship that aims at identifying novel drug targets using the most modern technological platforms and finding novel diagnostic tools to identify the patients benefitting from personalised therapies.

The InFLAMES Flagship of the University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University has invited four recognised experts in their fields as visiting professors. The expertise in the Flagship will be strengthened by Professor Petter Brodin, Professor Sarah Coupland, Dr Simon Goodman, and Professor Reijo Salonen. Their terms will last until the end of 2024.

Docent Juha Laine has been appointed as Professor of Practice in Pharmacoeconomics and Dr. Timo Veromaa Professor of Practice in Drug Development. The appointments strengthen the operations of the InFLAMES Flagship, joint effort of the University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University, funded by the Academy of Finland. Both professors of practice have been offered part-time positions for the duration of the InFLAMES Flagship funding period.

The preliminary trial results of a novel radiopharmaceutical for PET imaging of inflammation developed at the University of Turku, Finland, have been published. The compound, which targets the vascular adhesion protein 1 (VAP-1) that regulates inflammatory cell traffic, is the first radiopharmaceutical that has been developed completely in Finland and has advanced to clinical trials. In the study that started with healthy volunteers, the radiopharmaceutical was found to be well tolerated and safe.

Recently published research has indicated that folate receptor targeting therapy constrains inflammation in inflammatory demyelinating central nervous system lesions and may inhibit progression of the disease in animal model of multiple sclerosis (MS). This research has been conducted in co-operation with Turku PET Centre, Purdue University and Endocyte Inc (now part of Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, NIBR).

In 2019, the University of Turku launched a new doctoral training in collaboration with partners from the drug industry. A major part of the training is carried out in an industrial environment. The training also includes postgraduate studies and academic secondments in the University’s research groups. The training educates experts specialised in industrial research and product development.