Press releases

Researchers from the Jan Dobeš laboratory have made a significant discovery uncovering a novel immune response in the intestinal epithelium Furthermore, their study delineates a mechanism that controls this immune response.. Their findings were recently published in the renowned Journal of Experimental Medicine in a paper authored by Tomáš Brabec and other members of Jan Dobeš's laboratory at the Faculty of Science, Charles University. The study was a collaborative effort involving scientists from Martin Schwarzer's and Dominik Filipp's laboratories at the Czech Academy of Sciences, as well as Jakub Abramson from the Weizmann Institute in Israel.

Damaged nerve fibres in the spinal cord could be restored by gene therapy, which could then trigger the recovery and growth of axons, the outgrowths of nerve fibres. Successful experiments on laboratory animals have been carried out by scientists at the Institute of Experimental Medicine of the CAS. Rats have regained sensitivity in their hind limbs to almost pre-injury levels. Scientists have been working for six years to develop treatment methods for nerve diseases.

Thanks to the combined efforts of two departments of the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the CAS, a new cause of cancer, specifically leukaemia, has been discovered. Experts identified new mutations in the PPM1D gene that sabotage the work of the 'guardians' of the human genome, enabling cancers cells to spread rapidly. The research shows that these findings can also be used to fight leukaemia.

In cooperation with specialists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the CAS is developing unique software that will enable researchers to search through and contextualise a tremendous number of digitised historical sources and evaluate them using artificial intelligence. The software will be made available online to the public within the next year. The researchers’ goal is to integrate the new software with archives, libraries, and other institutions around the world.

Over the next three years, nearly two hundred children and their parents, researchers at the Czech Academy of Sciences, will benefit from a substantial financial donation. The funds will go towards the administration of six children’s groups in Prague and subsidized places for children in Brno. The parents of the youngest children will thus find it easier to combine their childcare duties with those of their demanding scientific careers.

Arthropods - creatures with jointed legs that contain today's crabs, beetles, or spiders - are the most successful animal group that ever existed on Earth. They contain over 1,200,000 described species, represent most of the animal biomass, and are one of the most fundamental parts of both marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Not only do their adults dominate the land and sea, but their juvenile and larval stages are as important as the mature individuals.

A loss of NEUROD1 leads to severe diabetes. However, the clinical, pathophysiological, and molecular characteristics of NEUROD1 mutations remain unclear. In a new study published in Nature Communications, researchers from the Institute of Biotechnology CAS, BIOCEV and from the Institute of Clinical and Experimental Medicine elucidate the crucial role of NEUROD1 in the development and maintenance of the endocrine pancreas.

Large earthquakes (M >8.5) in North-Central Chile are believed to occur in a regular cycle about every 100 years. An international team including a scientist from the Institute of Geophysics of the CAS has obtained evidence that the next large earthquake in this region may behave differently. In fact, the roughly 400 km long area of the active plate boundary currently seems to be divided into two smaller potential rupture areas. The discovered barrier in-between could significantly reduce the size of a future earthquake and thus its destructive effects.

Scientists from the IOCB Prague, the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and Palacký University Olomouc, have once again successfully uncovered the mysteries of the world of molecules and atoms. They have experimentally confirmed the correctness of a decades-old theory that assumed a non-uniform distribution of electron density in aromatic molecules. This phenomenon significantly affects the physicochemical properties of molecules and their interactions. This research expands the possibilities for designing new nanomaterials and is the theme of a paper that has just been published in Nature Communications.

Ariel, the European Space Agency’s next-generation mission to observe the chemical make-up of distant extrasolar planets, has passed a major milestone after successfully completing its Preliminary Design Review (PDR). The successful completion of the PDR marks a crucial step forward for Ariel, demonstrating that the mission's payload design meets all the required technical and scientific specifications, and no showstoppers were found for the foreseen launch in 2029.