2023 – InFLAMES Flagship Blog

Building bridges: A good marriage between the industry and academia

Students

There is no deny there is a gap between the industry and academia in all fields and disciplines. This can be reasoned by most industries being more resource efficient, and heavily reliant on strong, collaborative teamwork in comparison to academia-the kind of quickly changing, tense atmosphere that is very difficult to synthesise in academic environments.

This does not necessarily take away from the value of academic education where cumulative knowledge is religiously sought. Instead, it speaks of the value of both the industry and academia, the dire need to build bridges between the two.

Continue reading →

My postdoctoral research visit – super happy I did it!

Researchers Tutkijat

At the Solna campus and Gården Stenbrottet, behind me is Aula Medica.

On my postdoctoral visit I spent a total of six months in the research group of Docent Carsten Daub in Karolinska Institutet. The visit was divided into two periods: spring and autumn. This way I could spend the most active time of the year in the group. Why six months? Mainly for strategic reasons. It was enough to learn new skills and properly incorporate myself into the group, and at the same time it was short enough for my family to remain at home. And why Sweden? Karolinska Institutet is a highly ranked university, but at the same time it’s close by, so I could visit my family regularly.

Continue reading →

Gut feeling, Part 2: Butterflies in the stomach or something serious?

1 Comment

InFLAMES PI

Today, more than 56 000 patients in Finland (with 2500 new cases per year) are diagnosed with the chronic inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), Ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease. The IBD patient numbers in Europe and North America are reaching 4 million. These cases are now rising at a worrying speed here at home especially in youth, and overall in the developing countries.

How do we as individuals and the clinicians then know if something serious is going on in the gut, or, if we are in an unusually stressful or exciting period with “butterflies in the stomach”? Nevertheless, the increasing prevalence of various gut disorders requires a major attention from both the healthcare and research communities.

To differentiate between the many gut ailments, robust, specific, easy to perform and preferably inexpensive and non-invasive biomarkers are needed. Disease modeling and defining the cellular and molecular biology behind the diseases, are necessary to understand disease development and to identify better biomarkers.

Continue reading →

Gut Feeling, Part 1: The complex gut and its superheroes

InFLAMES PI

Inflammatory bowel disease, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, microscopic colitis, lymphocytic colitis, collagenous colitis, leaky gut, irritable bowel syndrome, celiac disease – a long list of some of the different ailments and diseases that can occur in the intestine. Complications in diagnosing and treating these conditions, that often have a chronic inflammatory component, is due to that:

a) the underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms are poorly known,
b) several unknown sub-diseases or disease variants likely exist,
c) the causes can be multifactorial, and,
d) the diagnostic methods are often invasive and not always diseases-specific.

So, there is a lot for us scientists to do, even if we know that the old saying “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” holds a lot of truth.

Continue reading →