Institute of Biotechnology
of the Czech Academy of Sciences

This year, six group leaders have received EMBO Installation Grants. One of them, and the only recipient in the Czech Republic, is Kateřina Rohlenová from the Institute of Biotechnology AS CR in the BIOCEV centre, who is also a recent holder of a prestigious ERC grant.

Mgr. Katerina Rohlenova, Ph.D. from the Institute of Biotechnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences at the BIOCEV Centre has been awarded the most prestigious European scientific grant by the European Research Council (ERC). She will receive EUR 1.5 million (approximately CZK 38 million) over five years for her innovative research into metabolic communication in tumours.

Testing of samples for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 virus by PCR in the BIOCEV centre is available only for employees of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Charles University who work at the Biotechnology and Biomedicine Centre in Vestec. Interested members of the public, companies and other institutions can use testing centres in the vicinity of BIOCEV and Prague.

One of the few projects that the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic will support within the JUNIOR STAR competition starting 2022 is project "Intercellular communication of nucleotides: a neglected goal for new anti-cancer approaches".

Excellent scientists have received the Award of the President of the Czech Science Foundation (GACR) for outstanding results in grant projects, which was exceptionally presented this year by GACR Vice President Stanislava Hronová. The prestigious prize for the best basic research was awarded to Zdeněk Lánský (Institute of Biotechnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences)

The second phase of the evaluation of the research institutes of the Academy of Sciences was succesfully completed

The Institute of Biotechnology (IBT) and the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry (IOCB Prague), both part of the Czech Academy of Sciences, have signed a licensing agreement with the company Immunotech, a subsidiary of Beckman Coulter, for the manufacture and distribution of a newly developed coronavirus antibody IVD test. ...

A new study from the Institute of Biotechnology’s Molecular Therapeutics Laboratory led by Prof. Jiří Neužil in collaboration with Prof. Karel Pacák’s group from the National Institute of Health (Bethesda, MD, USA), which led to the discovery of eight SUCLG2 gene variants in patients with neuroendocrine tumours, puts SUCLG2 on the list of genes whose pathogenic germline variations may increase the risk of cancer development due to misregulation of cellular metabolism. ...

Contractility is an essential biological process enabling cells to divide, move and change their shape. The established understanding of cell contractility is based on the action of myosin motor proteins sliding actin filaments relative to each other. ...

On the 1st of July 2021 the molecular-scale biophysics EU programme MOSBRI commences operation.