František Kolář has been awarded the Jan Evangelista Purkinje Honorary Field Medal for merit in the biomedical sciences. He has received the award from the hands of the President of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Eva Zažímalová on Monday, June 1. More
Jan Kudláček has been awarded the Sanofi Prize for Pharmacy for university students. He has received the award from the hands of the French Nobel Prize winner for chemistry, Jean-Marie Lehn. The competition for students of pharmaceutical sciences has been organized by the Embassy of the French Republic in Prague in cooperation with Sanofi for the eleventh time. Jan Kudláček placed third with his research on epilepsy treatment.
"Epilepsy requires long-term treatment and patients often need medication for life. Unfortunately, drugs are ineffective for approximately 30 % of patients. To find more effective treatments, it is necessary to understand the long-term dynamics of epilepsy and to clarify the mechanisms that drive long-term fluctuations in brain susceptibility to seizures. Mechanisms that control long-term seizure dynamics have not been considered in drug development; they represent a new therapeutic target not only for seizure-suppressing drugs but also for the treatment of epilepsy itself," Kudláček explained. He added that it is his research that could lead to advancement in this issue.
On Thursday, June 27, Jaroslav Kuneš received the Gregor Johann Mendel Honorary Medal for Merit in Biological Sciences from the hands of the President of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Eva Zažímalová. The Academic Council granted this prestigious award to four scientists who through their work contributed to advancement and popularization of their fields. "The Academic Council unanimously agreed to award the medal to the laureates, and we are honoured to do so," Eva Zažímalová said at the award ceremony at the seat of the Czech Academy of Sciences. More
On Sunday, June 16, the 41st annual national contest of Students’ Professional Activities (SPA) ended with an award ceremony for the best students in each category. Advancing to the national round is a great success for the entrants. One of the prizes in the Healthcare category is the Prize of the Director of the Institute of Physiology CAS. Hana Bernhardová (Gymnázium [KB1] F. Palackého, Valašské Meziříčí) won the first place in this category for her paper Effects of the canonical Wnt signalling pathway on differentiation potential of NG2 glia after ischemic brain injuries . Karolina Kubová (Gymnázium T. Novákové, Brno) came second for her paper Kinase Chk1 as a potential therapeutic target in malignant melanoma cells. Kateřina Ptáčková (Gymnázium and Vocational School of Pedagogy, Liberec) placed third with her paper Lactose Intolerance.
Marek Heide, who ranked fourth in the same category, achieved another great success; he won a special prize: a nomination to the competition Česká hlavička—a programme supporting talented students in technology and science —in the category Futura "Solutions for the Future", a prize awarded by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. Marek completed an internship at the Institute of Physiology at the Department of Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering under the guidance of Jana Musílková. Congratulations to all the winners!
This year marks the 65th anniversary of the founding of the Institute of Physiology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. On June 12, 2019, both current and former employees of the Institute and a number of guests celebrated this special event. All the living directors of the Institute took turns in the lecture hall (in the order of their terms in office: Zdeněk Drahota, Bohuslav Ošťádal, Pavel Mareš, Jaroslav Kuneš, Lucie Kubínová, and the current director, Jan Kopecký) and shared their memories of important moments in the Institute's history. Helena Illnerová, the President of the Czech Academy of Sciences in 2001-2005, also reminisced about the beginnings of her scientific career and the atmosphere of that time. The celebrations culminated with an informal garden party, which was also attended by the President of the Academy, Eva Zažímalová, and the Vice President, Zdeněk Havlas.
