Highlights

Mira Minkkinen presented her project ”Utilizing BioID to identify the keratin 8 interactome in colonic epithelial cells” at the Åbo Akademi University BioSeminar series.

Joel Nyström and Caroline Haldin presented posters at the 33rd Biocity Symposium: Unleashing the power of metabolism.

Diana Toivola gave a talk titled ”Colonocyte Keratins in Proliferation, Inflammation and Tumor Suppression” at the Intermediate Filaments Gordon Research Conference 2024 in Castelldefels, Spain. Calle Stenvall, Caroline Haldin and Maria Ilomäki also attended and presented posters.

The lab has gratefully received funding from the Finnish Diabetes Research Foundation, the medical support association Liv och Hälsa and the Diabetes Wellness foundation for our diabetes and endocrine pancreas research!

Diana Toivola attended the InFLAMES Corporate Corner as a speaker, presenting the Feanalytic project, titled ”Feanalytic: From research to advanced non-invasive IBD diagnostics”.

Caroline Haldin presented her project ”Role of the main type 2 keratin in beta cells” at the Åbo Akademi University BioSeminar series.

Lauri Polari and Maria Ilomäki participated in an episode of the American Journal of Physiology Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology ”Got Guts” podcast series where they discussed their recently published research titled “Defining a timeline of colon pathologies after keratin 8 loss: Rapid crypt elongation and diarrhea are followed by epithelial erosion and cell exfoliation.” You can check it out here: ”Got Guts” The Micro Version: Order of Events after Keratin 8 Sequential Downregulation

Business Finland and the Novo Nordisk Foundation have granted the lab major funding to explore the commercial potential of our recent findings regarding de novo keratin 7 expression in IBD, as reported in the news of the Finnish national broadcasting company, Yle. Article found here! (in Finnish)

Diana Toivola was chosen as the Åbo Akademi University Teacher of the Year 2023, receiving the Harry Elving legacy award!

Mina Tayyab gave a talk and presented a poster at the 32nd Biocity Symposium: Sculpting tissues – Cells matrix and forces.

Maria Ilomäki also presented a poster. Mina and Maria both won a poster prize!

Diana Toivola wrote two blog posts for the InFlames blog, summarizing how complex the gut is, along with how our research could work towards innovations aiding our understanding and diagnostics of gut disease. You can check out part 1, Gut Feeling, Part 1: The complex gut and its superheroes here and part two, Gut feeling, Part 2: Butterflies in the stomach or something serious? here.