About Us

We pursue curiosity driven basic research in molecular biology emphasizing those aspects that have considerable impact on the population health.

The IBT research is aimed at several main directions:

  • Research of the mitochondrial energetics. This research direction emphasizes targeting cancer cells via their metabolism mainly by impeding the Complex I and also by interfering with their iron metabolism. These efforts led to a fundamental discovery of the horizontal gene transfer of mitochondria between cells and to clinical trials of the compound MitoTam.
  • Research projects in the field of developmental biology, transcriptional regulation during embryonic development, and development of the neuronal system in vertebrates. The research aims at identification of the disease predispositions evolving during early development of the organisms extending to cancer research and diagnosis with aiming at potentially applicable results.
  • Research of male reproductive molecular and subcellular parameters as markers of fertility disorders involved in sperm-egg fusion including detailed characterization of the dynamic rearrangement of cytoskeletal proteins and their partner proteins.
  • New method development of RT-qPCR and implementation of high-throughput gene expression profiling and single-cell analysis using RNA-Seq.
  • Protein engineering combining techniques of in vitro protein evolution and of computer modeling for targeted modulation of protein properties such as binding affinity to medically important proteins.
  • Structure-function studies of proteins including structure-assisted drug design employing modern methods of biophysical and structural molecular analysis including X-ray crystallography.
  • Dynamics of biomolecules and imaging of single molecules and force measurement techniques to uncover how the individual structural elements of the cytoskeleton mechanically cooperate to drive diverse cellular processes.
  • Studies of the time dimension of biomolecular dynamics from ultra-short (fs) to medium (ms) times.
  • Structural bioinformatics with unique know-how of nucleic acid structures.

IBT benefits from its participation in the BIOCEV center. The center is a place for broad, interdisciplinary collaborations and enables easy access to the state of the art equipment in several areas of life sciences. The number of scientists, students, and technicians working in BIOCEV is sufficient to master and share various methodologies.