National projects

The intrinsic (mitochondrial) apoptosis pathway is a physiologically dominant form of cell death and is controlled by the BCL-2 family of proteins. The members of this family have opposing effects as some of them promote and others prevent mitochondria-dependent apoptosis. The cross-talk within this family, which is governed by protein-protein interactions between p...

Currently, our world is facing an acute shortage of novel vaccine adjuvants. Adjuvants enhance the immunogenicity of vaccines, therefore they constitute essential components of vaccines. They are needed not only to increase the magnitude of the response but also to guide the type of response to produce the most effective type of immunity against distinct pathogens/t...

Due to an ageing population, the challenges associated with cancer treatment are growing. The use of conventional chemotherapeutic agents is often limited because of their side effects. Moreover, resistance of cancer cells to chemotherapeutic drugs often results in failure of treatment. The project aims to contribute to the discovery and development of new anticance...

The increased frequency of resistance among human bacterial pathogens represents a serious public threat in the treatment of infectious diseases. The United Nations, the World Health Organisation and the European Commission, have recently declared antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as a serious global threat to public health that has a tremendous impact on healthcare ex...

Infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria continue to challenge health-care systems worldwide. We face a growing resistance of Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogens that cause infections in hospitals and in the community, with the so-called antibiotic-resistant ‘superbugs’ that now represent a major global health problem. The obstacles of ha...

Bioactive compounds featuring natural product-inspired three-dimensional molecular architectures exhibit higher rate of clinical success compared to synthetically less challenging flat aromatic drug candidates. Accessing such complex multi-chiral scaffolds is a daring task and is often precluded by the limitations of organic chemistry or avoided by medicinal chemist...

Nuclear medicine investigations have an integral role in timely identification and confirmation of cancer, staging, follow-up of treatment efficiency and identification of the disease relapse. Certain tumour types and entities can be visualized by nuclear medicine imaging techniques because of the (over)expression of different receptors for certain regulatory peptid...

Osteoporosis is the most common skeletal disease with deterioration of bone structure and increased risk of bone fractures. Even though the ethiology of osteoporosis has been well studied, effective personalized approach to prevention, diagnosis and particular anabolic drugs to prevent bone fractures are still lacking and there is an urgent need to identify novel ta...

Cancer remains an important cause of mortality and economic losses worldwide. The Bilateral Project provides excellent research in new anticancer discovery for the treatment of gastrointestinal (GI) carcinomas (colorectal, gastric, liver and pancreatic cancers), where hEag1 potassium channels are overexpressed in 75 to 100% cases. GI carcinomas are among the 10 most...

Cholinesterases (ChEs) are polymorphic serine hydrolases that catalyse the hydrolysis of neurotransmitter acetylcholine (ACh) and other esters. Two ChEs are found in vertebrates: acetylcholinesterase (AChE) and butyrycholinesterase (BChE). Both enzymes are involved not only in physiological processes but also in several pathophysiological processes (e.g.  Alzhe...