The research groups are presented in alphabetical order by the last name of the group leader.
Clinical pharmacy as a discipline is based on health sciences. The discipline is focused on optimising pharmacotherapy and promoting health. Emphases include rational medicine use and ways to influence it, the development and evaluation of clinical pharmacy services, and medication safety. Clinical pharmacy is based on multidisciplinary collaboration and patients’ involvement in their pharmacotherapy. Clinical pharmacy is a philosophy of practice covering all social and health care settings in hospital and outpatient care where pharmacotherapy is part of patient care (University of Helsinki 2010).
We are interested in mechanisms of neurodegeneration, neuroprotection and brain repair, and we try to find new ways to restore the damaged neuronal circuits and neurotransmission. We focus on studying stroke, Parkinson’s disease, and motivation, with the ultimate long-term goal being to develop disease-modifying therapies. We have a curiosity about endoplasmic reticulum homeostasis, protein aggregates, neural development, and biology of glial cells. We have a passion for excellent level research and high-quality international training. Our mission is to provide the highest quality science-based teaching and training. By finding out what is the thing you are most interested in, and then grasping the opportunity you can shape the future.
Combining experimental and computational methodologies to generate mechanistic insight into drug action and drug delivery systems.
Pharmaceutical research has fallen into a rut known as “Erooms Law”: while the resources expended increase exponentially the number of new approved drugs per year remains constant. This is partly due to the constricting paradigm of conventional drug design, based around finding molecular fits to the active sites of target proteins and high throughput screening: a mostly blind data driven approach. Biophysics represents the perspective that the biological systems in question, and drug delivery devices being developed, can be understood through the multiscale mechanistic paradigm provided by biophysics. This approach involves the application of a combined toolkit of computational and experimental methodologies that, together, can obtain this multiscale understanding that allows for the application of a rational design approach.
The IVTLab is an international and interdisciplinary laboratory promoting cutting-edge research in the field of oncoimmunology and immunotherapy using viruses as platforms to induce and/or orchestrate the tumor-specific immune response.
The laboratory is well supported and funded by prestigious and internationally recognised funding agencies such as the European Research Council Consolidator grant (ERC-CoG), HiLIFE, Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation and Business Finland.
In Anti-infectives research (AIR) group, we work to contribute to solutions for tackling global health challenges in access to anti-infective medication and antimicrobial resistance. Our research interests include pathogen-host interactions as an approach for new treatment strategies, biomarkers for persistent bacterial infections to enable novel diagnostics approaches, redox biology of bacterial infections and plant-derived anti-infective agents. Our interdisciplinary projects address global health questions related to access to medicines and antimicrobial stewardship from both high-income countries and global south perspectives.
Our goal is to develop prospective medication safety risk management methods for healthcare services systems to reduce medication related risks and patient harm. We explore issues such as the role of hospital and community pharmacies and their services in medication safety promotion, the medication safety of neonates and children, the use of healthcare data lakes as a source of medication risk information, and veterinary medication safety. The findings will be used to develop safe medication processes for patients in Finland and internationally. The research is part of the Helsinki One Health Research Network, and the main collaborators are the HUS-Pharmacy Research Center and the Faculty of Veterinary Faculty of the University of Helsinki.
We do biomedical research in vascular biology with a focus on lymphangiogenesis and the VEGF family of growth factors. Blood and lymphatic vessels play important roles in almost all major human diseases (cancer, cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative diseases).
Because we produce recombinantly large amounts of different vascular-related proteins (such as VEGFs, their receptors, antibodies) using E. coli, yeast, insect cells, and mammalian cells, we started research on the protein production and purification technology itself. Now, we are also developing an entirely new expression system for antibodies and other proteins with the goal of being cheaper, faster, and more sustainable than what is available at the moment to academic laboratories.
Industrial pharmacy research includes manufacturing, development, marketing and distribution of drug products and quality assurance of these activities.
Our research aims to reveal the effects of membrane transporters on drug exposure and variability in drug pharmacokinetics. These transporters play a key role in the absorption, distribution and elimination of many drugs. Changes in their activity may, therefore, be reflected in the disposition of the drugs that they transport. Transporter activity may be affected for example by other drugs, food components or genetics factors. Transporters either at the cell surface or in intracellular organelles (e.g., lysosomes) also influence intracellular distribution of many drugs. This can lead to cellular toxicity or lack of efficacy. In addition to drug transport, we are also interested in how the bacteria in our gut can affect drug pharmacokinetics, for example via the reactivation of drug metabolites.
Lipoprotein LAB (LLAB) is a research group dedicated to advance the field of pharmaceutics by exploring the underlying mechanisms that govern the behavior and functions of lipoproteins and their associated enzymes. By gaining a deeper understanding of these mechanisms, we aim to develop novel drug delivery vehicles based on lipoproteins. Additionally, LLAB focuses on creating new therapeutics for cardiovascular diseases, and enhancing the efficacy and precision of existing treatments in this field.
We work on controlled drug release and delivery using modern methods and materials. We are studying bio- and nanomaterials such as liposomes and cellulose nanofibers, the use of new tools to track drug molecules and carriers, and tailored materials for pharmaceutical applications. We are particularly interested in using light to both monitor nanomaterial behaviour and to trigger e.g. drug release processes.
We are a multidisciplinary team with broad expertise in preclinical and clinical neuropharmacology. Our goal is to improve the treatment of disorders affecting the central nervous system (CNS), especially by studying the pharmacology of the newly recognized glymphatic system. We explore pharmacological interventions to enhance the clearance of brain metabolites and the delivery of CNS-targeted drugs by utilizing the glymphatic perivascular networks. We seek to advance individualized drug therapy and treatment of acute poisonings through developing point-of-care drug concentration monitoring platforms and investigating pharmacokinetic interactions. We train researchers interested in neuropharmacology.
We aim to explore mechanisms of sleep and chronobiology and how they are connected with antidepressant treatments to restore neuroplasticity. We investigate neurobiological mechanisms underlying rapid (ketamine, psilocybin, nitrous oxide) and sustained (SSRIs) antidepressant drug effects. The findings will be utilised to develop novel drugs for depression, a leading causes of disability.
Nanomedicine, Biomedical Engineering and Controlled Drug Delivery.
We are a multidisciplinary research group at the University of Helsinki, Finland, developing microfluidic sample preparation and separation devices for pharmaceutical and bioanalyses. The developed microfluidic total analysis systems (also referred to as lab-on-a-chip) are designed with a view to facilitate examination of the molecular cross-talk between the environment and the human health. Our primary tools include various types of immobilized enzyme microreactors and analytical techniques like microchip capillary electrophoresis in combination with (laser-induced) fluorescence detection, electrospray ionization mass spectrometry, and electrochemical detection. We are also keen on integrating various types of sample preparation units as integral parts of the microfluidic separation systems.
The Pharmaceutical Spectroscopy and Imaging specialises in introducing and advancing synergistic technologies that facilitate industrial drug discovery and development.
We aim at discovering new ways to treat heart diseases by investigating the molecular mechanisms of genetic cardiac diseases as well as cardiac regeneration and remodelling, and thereby identifying potential new drug targets. We are interested in three cell types: cardiomyocytes, i.e. heart muscle cells, fibroblasts, and vascular endothelial cells. We aim to find ways to promote cardiomyocyte renewal after a myocardial infarction and strategies to inhibit pathological cardiac remodelling: hypertrophy (thickening) and fibrosis (stiffening). We develop, screen and characterise new compounds with potential to enhance the regenerative capacity of the heart or to inhibit cardiac remodelling.
We are experts in antimicrobial drug discovery, exploring new ways to confront the global challenge of emerging drug resistance amongst bacteria.
Optimal delivery of drugs to their target sites is essential for drug efficacy and safety. Drug delivery unit explores the key pharmacokinetic factors in drug delivery as well as new technologies for delivering drugs, especially to the eyes.
Our goal is to identify the therapeutic potential of novel biologicals for neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Parkinson's and Huntington's disease, and multiple sclerosis, and clarify their molecular mechanisms. We use various approaches to study how to overcome the loss of neurons and remyelination failure. In collaboration with companies, we can take our findings to the clinic.
We aim to understand how nanoparticles deliver biological drugs inside cells, and use these understanding to develop new nanomedicine for novel biotherapeutics. Our research topics are at the interfaces of chemistry, biology and pharmaceutical sciences.
Focusing on drug discovery by applying and developing methods in synthetic medicinal chemistry, the Viikki Biocenter medicinal chemistry team is unique at the University of Helsinki in translating the increasing structural information of drug targets or ligands into the synthesis of novel compounds that do not exist in the current commercial compound libraries. These new compounds serve as valuable probes in the research of new drug targets or as chemical entities in the search for novel therapeutic compounds. Our team is also responsible for teaching organic chemistry related to medicinal chemistry, drug discovery, drug action, and drug metabolism.
The focal point of Biopharmaceutics group research is the development of the biomaterials for cell culture, drug delivery, and tissue repair together with the relevant detection technology. The developed materials are based on the nanofibrillated cellulose, nanoparticles, and extracellular vesicles.
The ultimate goals of the unit are to discover better, more efficient and safer drug candidates against relevant human diseases, to discover chemical probes for studying biological processes as well as to develop innovative pharmaceutical applications and methods.