A new COST Action No. CA23156 “European Network for Sigma-1 Receptor as a Therapeutic Opportunity (SIGMA-1EUROPE)” was launched on October 25, 2024. The SIGMA-1 EUROPE network will bring together disciplines and expertise across Europe to advance the exploration and identification of the role of Sigma-1 receptor in physiology and pathologies, to design innovative ligands and train young researchers. The Management Committee from Estonia is represented by Dr. Edijs Vavers and Prof. Allen Kaasik. Dr. Edijs Vavers was confirmed as the lead of WG5 and will be responsible for the Dissemination, Communication and Outreach of the network activities.

The University of Tartu Youth Academy is organising a program "Talents to Tartu" for first year bachelor students who have excellent academic results and keen interest in specific fields to already start their academic research. We are welcoming four new talents who will have the opportunity to work in two important research directions:
​1) How is cholesterol influencing the interaction between the drug and the drug target?
2) Creating genetically modified viral particles for bioluminescence-based assay to screen for drug candidates. 

The second edition of "Muscarinic Receptor. From Structure to Animal Models" was published. This receptor family has been in our research focus for quite some time.  Futhermore, scientists Oswald Schmiedeberg and Richard Koppe were the first to isolate muscarine from the mushroom Amanita muscaria (commonly known as fly agaric) at the University of Tartu in 1869. We are happy to contribute to this historical research topic by sharing our recent assay developments in two chapters:

• Chapter 6: Exploring Muscarinic Acetylcholine Receptor Binding Kinetics with Fluorescence Anisotropy​​
• Chapter 7: MultiBacMam Technology for Studying the Downstream cAMP Signaling Pathway of M2 Muscarinic Acetylcholine Receptor

These chapters provide detailed protocols for carrying either ligand binding or functional assays for muscarinic acetylcholine receptors.

Darja Lavõgina and her student Mattias Kaspar Krõlov together with collaborators have described a novel drug candidate that could potentially help against aggressive brain tumors, such as glioblastoma. The compound targets and inhibits the enzyme PRMT5, which has increased activity in glioblastoma.
The article was published in Scientific Reports and a short summary in Estonian is available here.

Two of our female research fellows Maris-Johanna Tahk and Anni Allikalt gave interviews about their scientific careers to celebrate "Women in Science". Maris said that she enjoys the variety in scientific work - sometimes there are practical sessions or lectures, other days involve conducting laboratory experiments and analyzing data, and finally, writing articles. This allows her to evolve in various ways. Anni particularly enjoys how fascinating scientific research is - in biochemistry, there is so much that is still unknown, and solving these puzzles could prove highly beneficial in medicine. She also said that she greatly appreciates analyzing and discussing experimental results with other scientists. Often, individuals with different backgrounds offer new and exciting perspectives that one might not think of immediately.

The Estonian version can be found here:

• Link to interview with Maris.
• Link to interview with Anni.

In 2023, the national competition "Science to Wikipedia" was held and Darja was awarded one of the main prizes for her contributions. She wrote several scientific articles in Estonian intended for a general audience. For example, you can now read about:
* FRET
* Fluorescence quenching
* Lipinski's rule of five

Prof. Ago Rinken gave an interview in Estonian telling the story of his scientific journey. He also explained his research topic and why G protein-coupled receptor research is so vital. Importantly, he also talked about learning and teaching chemistry and emphasized that in order to understande chemistry one does not have to memorize facts like in History, rather "it is necessary to understand the inner logic of Chemistry".

We a proud to announce that Tõnis Laasfeld received the main prize of the 2023 National Research Competition for his doctoral thesis titled "Integrating Image Analysis and Quantitative Modeling for a Holistic View of GPCR Ligand Binding Dynamics". You can read more about the research Tõnis is doing here.
The winning doctoral thesis can be found here. 
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