The past year 2010 was again rather eventful for both our Institute and the entire Academy of Sciences (AS). The crisis, started by incompetent decisions of the Council for Research, Development and Innovations of the Czech Government in 2009, continued and threatened to bring extremely serious consequences to the AS future. I am glad that the worst expected scenarios were not fulfilled and that the AS budget (and thus the IMG budget) for 2010 was reduced by ”only” ca 12 %. Relatively positive is the fact that the planned reduction for AS in 2011 will also be rather low (ca 2 %). For this, we should be grateful to the AS management, who successfully and relentlessly negotiated with politicians, but also to the continuing activities of a number of AS researchers. I was especially pleased by the active interest of young researchers (namely students) of the platform ”Science Alive”. The support of journalists and public played an important role as well. Many of us, unfortunately, lost hundreds of hours of valuable time in these ”battles”. Despite that, I believe that all this effort was not in vain and that all will come right in the end.
Still, the ”reform of research and development” proclaimed by the Czech Government fills me with many doubts.
I believe that the past year also brought success in the area of our ”raison d'etre” - good science. We again published tens of scientific papers in prestigious international journals, and transferred a number of practically applicable products to our partner spin-off companies.
Scientific life at our Institute was again highlighted by tens of scientific seminars and lectures given by our researchers and by our guests. Our new conference hall (since January 2009 bearing the name ”Milan Hašek Auditorium” in honour of Milan Hašek, founder of our Institute) hosted several international conferences, organized by IMG but also other AS Institutes of the campus. I would like to mention the especially successful international meetings ”Centennial Retrovirus Meeting”, ”The Second European Chemical Biology Symposium”, ”EMBO Young Scientists Forum” and ”52nd Symposium of the Society for Histochemistry”.
We have completed renovation of the building that houses biological non-mouse models (namely chicken) and construction of the building of kindergarten and gym (delayed due to administrative hindrances associated with building authorization). Designs for essential renovation of our breeding campus in Koleč and animal facility building V in Krč are ready for implementation.
Research of the scientific groups at IMG remains well supported by grants from various funding agencies, including prestigious international ones. At present, we have at our Institute five co-investigators of grants of the 6th Framework and two of the 7th Framework EC Programme. The Institute hosts two ”Research Centres” of the 1M Programme of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic (Centre of Applied Genomics, Centre of Molecular and Cell Immunology) and our researchers participate in another 1M Centre (Centre of Targeted Therapeutics). We obtained support for three basic research Centres (Centre of Cell Invasiveness in Embryonic Development and Tumour Metastases, Centre of Functional Cell Organization, Centre of Chemical Genetics), and the Institute researchers also contribute to the work of two other Centres of basic research (Centre of Molecular Ecology of Vectors and Pathogens, Fluorescence Microscopy in Biological and Medical Research).
At present, 23 research groups of the Institute are engaged in the topics of molecular and cellular biology, molecular immunology, functional genomics and bioinformatics, study of oncogenes, molecular biology of development, structural biology and mechanisms of receptor signalling. Very positive for the Institute is the presence of about 80 doctoral students and 50 undergraduates. A number of our scientists actively work as university teachers (e.g., eight as professors and seven as associate professors; we provide 27 semestral courses at the Universities).
Although we consider basic research as the priority area of the Institute activity, with publications in prestigious international journals as its main output, valuable applied research with particular practical applications is also being developed at our Institute. Also in this area the Institute has achieved significant success, with several well-prospering spin-off companies established in the past years as a result - these companies maintain close collaboration with our research groups.
The high standing of the Institute researchers is testified by a number of awards and prizes, including the membership of three Institute scientists in the Learned Society of the Czech Republic. This year, Professor Jan Svoboda was honoured with the National Award of the Government of the Czech Republic ”Czech Brains”. Professor Jiří Forejt is holder of the highly prestigious five-year Academy award Premium Academiae; two Institute researchers (Assoc. Prof. Radislav Sedláček and Dr. Petr Svoboda) are awardees of the five-year J.E. Purkynje Fellowship. The Institute represents the Czech Republic in several leading scientific organizations and institutions, including the European Molecular Biology Conference (EMBC), the European Science Foundation (ESF), and the NATO Steering Group of the Science for Peace programme. Three Institute scientists have been elected EMBO members. IMG scientists serve on 35 Editorial Boards of scientific journals.
The scientists of the Institute of Molecular Genetics are very open to co-operation with the media in popularizing scientific results and explaining the importance of science in general and molecular genetics in particular (see e.g. IMG in media).
In our plans for the next year, of crucial importance will be results of the overall evaluation of AS CR Institutes and definitive decision on launching the BIOCEV Project within the programme Research and Development for Innovations (http://www.biocev.eu). In 2011, we plan to start renovation of building V on the Krč campus and, possibly, essential reconstruction of our breeding facility in Koleč.
I am convinced that despite the present financial problems, the Institute of Molecular Genetics can hope for a good future, as a continuation of the famous past represented by the names of Milan Hašek, Jan Svoboda, and a number of others.
I wish to thank all Institute employees for their work in the past year and hope that a lot of success awaits us in the coming year 2011.
