Screening Core
The Screening Core is part of the Turku Screening Unit, an organisation with three affiliated laboratories from across the bioscience campus in Turku. Services provided span from virtual screening, structure determination and medicinal chemistry through protein, cell and organoid screens to small animal model screens.
The Neuronal Signalling Laboratory at Turku Bioscience focuses on development and application of optical methods to monitor and perturb signalling pathways in cell and tissue models of disease.
The MedChem.fi laboratory at the Institute of Biomedicine of the University of Turku is headed by Professor Olli Pentikäinen and provides expertise in virtual screening and optimisation of molecules used in both screens and in target validation methods.
The Structural Bioinformatics Laboratory at Åbo Akademi University, SBL-CDD, is an independent unit that offers expertise in protein-ligand interactions and computational methods for structural bioinformatics to solve complex biological problems in protein structure, function, evolution and molecular interactions.
The Screening Core primarily focuses on wet lab screens, combining the use of liquid handling devices and platforms, readers and high-throughput imagers, the corresponding data analysis workflows, and making these available to meet the needs of user projects.
The Screening Core is, together with SBL-CDD and the Zebrafish Core, a member of the European Infrastructure Consortium EU-Openscreen and the national counterpart EU-Openscreen-Finland. Instruments hosted are jointly owned by University Of Turku and Åboi Akademi University, having in part been acquired through collaborative infrastructure applications with SBL-CDD.
We are part of Biocenter Finland Drug Discovery and Chemical Biology
Research and Development
The core facility is active in establishing both previously reported methods and developing novel methods for the benefit of facility users. For example, we have:
- developed multiple high-sensitivity protein-protein interaction inhibitor screening methods applicable to proteins in cell-free conditions and in intact cells, allowing screening of protein pairs that are difficult generate, purify or use from recombinant systems
- developed a novel design approach for imposing optical regulation on short peptide inhibitors
Currently we work on the generation of new optical actuators (cellular optogenetics) and reporters and aim to find more efficient ways to implement them for use on biological material analysed by imagers and other measurement devices.
Recent Publications from Users of the Screening Core
Conway JRW, Joshi O, Kaivola J, Follain G, Gounis M, Kühl D, Ivaska J. Dynamic regulation of integrin β1 phosphorylation supports invasion of breast cancer cells. Nat Cell Biol. 2025 Jun;27(6):1021-1034. doi: 10.1038/s41556-025-01663-4. Epub 2025 May 26. PMID: 40419795; PMCID: PMC12173946.
Cutrone L, Djupenström H, Peltonen J, Martinez Klimova E, Corso S, Giordano S, Sistonen L, Gramolelli S. Heat shock factor 2 regulates oncogenic gamma-herpesvirus gene expression by remodeling the chromatin at the ORF50 and BZLF1 promoter. PLoS Pathog. 2025 Apr 17;21(4):e1013108. doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1013108. PMID: 40245053; PMCID: PMC12047821.
Momeny M, Tienhaara M, Sharma M, Chakroborty D, Varjus R, Takala I, Merisaari J, Padzik A, Vogt A, Paatero I, Elenius K, Laajala TD, Kurppa KJ, Westermarck J. DUSP6 inhibition overcomes neuregulin/HER3-driven therapy tolerance in HER2+ breast cancer. EMBO Mol Med. 2024 Jul;16(7):1603-1629. doi: 10.1038/s44321-024-00088-0. Epub 2024 Jun 17. PMID: 38886591; PMCID: PMC11251193.
Ali AE, Li LL, Courtney MJ, Pentikäinen OT, Postila PA. Atomistic simulations reveal impacts of missense mutations on the structure and function of SynGAP1. Brief Bioinform. 2024 Sep 23;25(6):bbae458. doi: 10.1093/bib/bbae458. PMID: 39311700; PMCID: PMC114182
News
DDCB symposium on May 4th 2023
May 4, 2023
The Turku Screening Unit is now a partner site of EU-OPENSCREEN
October 14, 2022