Dr. Jing Tang, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki
Network pharmacology approaches for functional precision medicine

Dr. Vilja Siitonen, Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Science and Engineering,University of Turku
Unravelling the biosynthesis of antibiotics – Nogalamycin as an example

Coffee at 13:45

Dr. Tang is an assistant professor and group leader at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki. He received his PhD in statistics from the University of Helsinki in 2019. His main research interests are computational systems medicine, aiming at mathematical, statistical and informatics tools to tackle biomedical questions that may potentially lead to breakthroughs in drug discovery. More info:

https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/network-pharmacology-for-precision-medicine

Twitter: @NETPHARMED

Key publications:
Zagidullin, B., Aldahdooh, J. Zheng, S., Wang, W., Wang, Y., Saad, J., Malyutina, A., Mohieddin, J., Tanoli, Z., Pessia, A. and Tang, J. (2019) DrugComb – an integrative cancer drug combination data portal. Nucleic Acids Res. pii: gkz337. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkz337 

Malyutina, A., Majumder, M.M., Wang, W., Pessia, A., Heckman, C. and Tang, J. (2019) Drug combination sensitivity scoring facilitates the discovery of synergistic and efficacious drug combinations in cancer. PLoS Comput. Biol. 15(5):e1006752.

Ianevski A., He L., Aittokallio T. and Tang J. (2017) SynergyFinder: a web application for analyzing drug combination dose-response matrix data. Bioinformatics. 33, 2413-2415

Yadav B., Wenerberg K., Aittokallio T. and Tang J. (2015) Searching for drug synergy in complex dose-response landscapes using an interaction potency model. Comput. Struct. Biotechnol. J. 13, 504-13

Tang J. and Aittokallio T. (2014). Network pharmacology strategies toward multi-target anticancer therapies: from computational models to experimental design principles. Curr. Pharm. Des. 20, 23-36

Dr. Vilja Siitonen graduated as PhD in 2016 from the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Turku in the “Antibiotic Biosynthetic Engineering”, ABE. During her PhD Vilja studied biosynthesis of the anthracycline antibiotic nogalamycin produced by Streptomyces nogalater. She found genes responsible for the late stage of the nogalamycin biosynthesis and characterized enzymes and low molecular weight intermediates from the nogalamycin biosynthesis pathway. After her PhD Vilja has been studying bioactive compounds from several Streptomyces strains employing a wide repertoire of methods including high resolution mass, high-performance liquid chromatography and nuclear magnetic resonance. Her main interest is to understand how antibiotics are built and to find novel bioactive compounds.

Key publications:
Siitonen, V., Nji Wandi, B., Törmanen, A. and Metsä-Ketelä, M. (2018) Enzymatic Synthesis of the C-glycosidic Moiety of Nogalamycin R. ACS Chem. Biol. 13(9): 2433–2437

Siitonen, V., Selvaraj, B., Niiranen, L., Lindqvist, Y., Schneider, G., and Metsä-Ketelä, M. (2016) Divergent Non-heme Iron Enzymes in the Nogalamycin Biosynthetic Pathway. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A.,113(19):5251–5256 

Claesson, M., Siitonen, V., Dobritzsch, D., Metsä-Ketelä, M., and Schneider, G. (2012) Crystal structure of the glycosyltransferase SnogD from the biosynthetic pathway of nogalamycin in Streptomyces nogalater. FEBS journal, 279(17): 3251–3263. 

Siitonen, V., Blauenburg, B., Kallio, P., Mäntsälä, P., and Metsä-Ketelä, M. (2012) Discovery of a Two-Component Monooxygenase SnoaW/SnoaL2 Involved in Nogalamycin Biosynthesis. Chemistry & Biology, 19(5): 638–646. 

Siitonen, V., Claesson, M., Patrikainen, P., Aromaa, M., Mäntsälä, P., Schneider, G., and Metsä-Ketelä, M. (2012) Identification of late-stage glycosylation steps in the biosynthetic pathway of the anthracycline nogalamycin. ChemBioChem, 13(1): 120–128.