National projects

Neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease (AD), pose a serious healthcare threat with the staggering number of patients diagnosed with these disorders. The therapy is currently limited to palliative care and relief of the symptoms with numerous novel drugs in the pipeline. Among these, multifunctional ligands are focused on targeting multiple pathologies involved in the AD progress...

β-Lactam antibiotics remain the single most important antibiotic class in use worldwide. The clinical longevity of β-lactams is threatened by bacterial resistance enzymes (i.e. β-lactamases, BL) that can inactivate them by hydrolysis. We face a growing resistance to Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogens that cause infections in hospitals and the c...

In Slovenia there are currently 11.000 beekeepers, which own and maintain 150.000 bee colonies annually producing 2.000 t of honey and other bee products. Thus, they represent a very important economic share in agriculture. In the beekeeping sector in recent years, a tendency of increased use of organic products for varroa control, i.e. those that are acceptable to ...

During the last 10 years, the number of new psychoactive substances (NPS) has increased almost exponentially to the present situation with more than one new substance being detected and reported every week. Most of these NPS are synthetic. NPS are divided into five major groups: phenethylamines (including cathinones), piperazines, piperidines, tryptamines and synthe...

Cardiovascular diseases still represent the major cause of morbidity and mortality in developed countries. The most important and most effective global approach to decrease the incidence of cardiovascular diseases is their effective prevention. Despite the fact that the current non-pharmacological and pharmacological strategies slightly restricted the burden of card...

Prirojene razvojne nepravilnosti in neželeni izidi nosečnosti predstavljajo velik javno-zdravstveni problem, saj imajo dolgotrajen vpliv na zdravje in kvaliteto življenja prizadetih otrok in njihovih staršev. Motnje in spremembe v metabolizmu folatov so najpomembnejši potencialni dejavnik tveganja za najpogostejše prirojene razvojne nepravilnost...

The wide-spread use of antibiotics is resulting in increasing number of antibiotic and multiple antibiotic resistant strains. Among them are the MRSA (methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and VRSA (vancomycin resistant Staphylococcus aureus). Treatment of such infections is difficult and it urgently calls for new approaches in drug discovery that in turn req...

Potential risks associated with release of pharmaceuticals into the environment are an important issue for environmental regulators and for the pharmaceutical industry. Anticancer drugs, due to their mechanism of action, belong to highly hazardous compounds. Their presence in the environment may lead to systemic environmental effects, while in exposed humans increas...

The aim of the proposed project is to develop safe theranostic lactic acid bacteria (ProbioTheranostics) that will be engineered with the ability to specifically target colorectal cancer cells, localize the tumor position using fluorescence imaging, and treat the colorectal cancer by exerting anti-inflammatory activity and modulating the composition of microbiota. P...