Visit of Nobel Prize winner Professor Gregg L. Semenza

During his stay in the Czech Republic, Nobel Prize winner in Physiology and Medicine Professor Gregg L. Semenza visited IBT at the BIOCEV center. It was the first visit of a Nobel Prize winner in the history of the center and his lecture on "Hypoxia-inducible factors in Physiology and medicine" filled the conference hall to the last seat.

His visit to the Czech Republic continued with his participation as the keynote speaker at the 57th Conference of the European Society for Clinical Investigations, where on June 7, he gave a talk titled “Targeting Hypoxia-Inducible Factors for Cancer Therapy”. A number of scientists from the Institute of Biotechnology contributed significantly to the organization of the conference, with Professor Jiří Neužil as the main organizer.

In both lectures, Prof. Semenza spoke about the discovery for which he received the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the discovery of transcriptional gene regulation that occurs during hypoxia. He described how cells respond to a stressful situation caused by lack of oxygen, a common phenomenon in many pathologies including cancer. His discovery is groundbreaking for the understanding of cell biology and has great added value in the form of clinical application. A few therapeutic approaches based on it are currently being tested. During his visit, he was also awarded an honorary doctorate from Charles University for his outstanding contribution to medical sciences.

Prof. Semenza's lectures were of a very high standard and presented in a way that was very understandable even to those who are not specialists in the field. During his visit to the BIOCEV Centre, Prof. Semenza also filmed an interview for ČT (Czech Television) and spent about an hour of his time in an interesting and inspiring discussion with our Ph.D. students.