Anu Kiviniemi; I did my PhD thesis at Bioorganic group in 2011 related mainly on click-chemistry on 4´-modified oligonucleotides (´Studies on Intrachain Conjugation, Hybridization and Invasion of Oligonucleotides´). Since year 2013, I have been working at PerkinElmer Wallac Oy and currently as a Senior Principal R&D Scientist. My job there is to develop new products for newborn screening of severe metabolic disorders that are treatable, if diagnosed early in life. I´m mainly working with small molecule assays based on mass spectrometry detection but occasionally also with PCR-technologies keeping in touch with nucleic acids. In all, I think organic chemistry has provided me a best possible background for the job with a key mind-set on structure, property, and reactivity.
Alejandro Gimenez Molina is since August 2023 Group Leader in the R&D Oligonucleotide department at Bachem in Switzerland. Previously, he worked for 4 years (2019-2023) as Oligonucleotide Process Chemist in the Chemical Development R&D at the Janssen Pharmaceutical companies of Johnson & Johnson (Belgium). He received his Ph.D. in 2015 focused on Liquid-Phase Oligonucleotide Synthesis from the University of Turku (Finland) under the supervision of Prof. Harri Lonnberg and Prof. Pasi Virta, before undertaking postdoctoral studies. Firstly, with Prof. Michael Smietana at the University of Montpellier in France (2016-2017) on the synthesis of Borononucleotides, and secondly, with Prof. Poul Nielsen at the University of Southern Denmark (2018-2019) on the synthesis of DNA/RNA molecular motors. Since 2020 he is serving as co-lead of the ACS Green Chemistry Institute in the Oligonucleotide team, and additionally he is member of the ACS Green Chemistry Articles of Interest for the pharmaceutical industry. Throughout his academic and industrial career, Alejandro has published several articles in the Oligonucleotide field.
Satish Jadhav, PhD, received his PhD from Bioorganic Chemistry group (2011-2016) at the University of Turku, Finland and was a Postdoctoral Fellow (2017-2022) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), CA, USA. In 2022, Dr. Jadhav joined Ionis Pharmaceuticals at Carlsbad CA, USA as a Senior Scientist-Medicinal Chemistry. His PhD research work focused on “covalent conjugates of therapeutic oligonucleotides for in vivo targeting’’. Later postdoctoral work has focused on the on addressing the rate-limiting delivery step of oligonucleotide therapeutics by synthesis of biomimetic endosomal escape molecules.
Petja Rosenqvist, Matemaattis-luonnontieteellinen, Kemia
Petja Rosenqvist; I did my doctoral research focusing on natural C-nucleoside modifications in the Bioorganic group in 2016–2021. After defending my thesis, I continued working in the Department of Chemistry for a year doing research on liquid phase oligonucleotide synthesis and partaking in supervision of lab courses in the teaching laboratory. In March 2023, I moved to the United Kingdom to begin my two-year postdoctoral period at Durham University with funding from the Royal Society’s Newton International Fellowship program. The postdoc project concentrates on preparing modified tRNA molecules for in vitro translation of non-natural amino acids. The prior work done at University of Turku gave me a good basis for starting this project involving plenty of nucleoside and nucleotide chemistry.