News

Prague / Baltimore, November 15, 2016 -- The Johns Hopkins University (JHU) School of Medicine and Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IOCB Prague) have extended their collaboration in translational research, which started in 2015, to include a joint postdoctoral fellowship training program.

The parties are promoting academic exchange by allowing selected postdoctoral fellows to conduct collaborative research in drug discovery and translational research at the partner institution: Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine will host postdoctoral fellows from IOCB and IOCB will host postdoctoral fellows from JHU for a minimum period of two years. Research projects will be mainly in the fields of chemistry, drug metabolism, pharmacokinetics, assay development and screening.

“I’m very happy that our collaboration with JHU brings yet another fruit,” says Zdeněk Hostomský, Ph.D., director of the IOCB Prague. “Apart from creating opportunities for young scientists to get new valuable experience from another top research institution, we expect that this synergy and combination of our chemistry capabilities with JHU’s biology and drug discovery experience will boost the direct cooperation between our teams, accelerate our research efforts and finally bring real and important results in drug discovery field.”

“The inaugural two years of our JHU-IOCB collaboration have been productive, leading to multiple joint publications patent filings,” says Barbara Slusher, PhD, MAS, Professor of Neurology, Neuroscience, Psychiatry, medicine and Oncology at Johns Hopkins and the Director of Johns Hopkins Drug Discovery. “The new joint post-doctoral training program will further strengthen and broaden our interactions.”

The Johns Hopkins Drug Discovery (JHDD) program at The Johns Hopkins University and IOCB Prague will work together to identify qualified candidates for the exchange. Visiting fellows will be provided with laboratory space and supplies for their project as well as granted with an annual stipend, total sum of which will be based on the rules of hosting institution and will be equally born by IOCB and the Johns Hopkins University.

Johns Hopkins and IOCB Prague started their collaboration in 2015 when they have entered into a five-year drug discovery research agreement to develop small-molecule and peptide drugs for a range of therapeutic areas including neurological diseases, cancer and gastrointestinal disorders.

The IOCB Prague, Czech Republic, performs fundamental research in organic chemistry, biochemistry and related disciplines oriented, in part, to medicinal applications. Among others, the HIV therapy blockbuster Tenofovir TM originated at IOCB Prague. The JHDD represents a Pharma-experienced team of drug discovery scientists tasked with identifying novel drug targets arising from Johns Hopkins faculty research and translating them into new small molecule drug therapies. The collaboration brings together the significant expertise and experience in medicinal chemistry at IOCB Prague with the biological target ideas, screening assays, animal pharmacology, drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics expertise at JHDD.