National projects

Breast cancer (BC) is a significant and common disease with a negative effect prevalently on women health, and the second most deadly type of cancer in females. BC is a highly heterogeneous disease due to its diverse morphological  features, variable clinical outcomes and responses to currently available therapeutic options. Due to its high degree of heterogene...

In recent years, we observed an alarming increase in life-threatening infections due to resistant Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogens and mycobacteria. Resistance has evolved to every single antibacterial   drug that has been introduced to the clinic, which strongly limits our treatment options. New antibacterials specifically aimed at resistant infe...

There is an urgent need for new therapies and new antibiotics to treat deadly infections caused by so-called ESKAPE pathogens (Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Enterobacter species), which are often resistant to available antibiotics. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is becoming an ...

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...

Background. 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 regul...