Young researcher Anja Pucer has been involved in the project with her doctoral thesis program, within the program Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies, at the Jozef Stefan International Postgraduate School. She constructed several vectors harboring genes of selected human sPLA2s and some other enzymes, aimed to transfect them into different mammalian cells. On the cellular models, she will study the effects of overexpression of each gene on proliferation and in vitro invasiveness. Anja also prepared a breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-231 that stably overexpressed human sPLA2-X.
D.09 Tutoring for postgraduate students
COBISS.SI-ID: 00000000Prof. Jože Pungerčar is a lecturer of two undergraduate subjects at the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology , University of Ljubljana (UL). In the last period he mentored several BSc and PhD theses (3 BSc theses, all in the final stage, are from the field of this project). He is participating at three interdisciplinary doctoral programmes, at the Jožef Stefan International Postgraduate School in Ljubljana, and the Medical Faculty and the Biotechnical Faculty, UL. Two other members of the project group, Prof. Igor Križaj and Assist. Prof. Toni Petan, are also educationally very active.
D.10 Educational activities
COBISS.SI-ID: 0000000CIPKeBiP is connecting the top available expertise, knowhow, and technology of Slovenian research laboratories in protein science, thus emphasizing biomedical relevance of the applied project (priority health and life sciences). The Centre includes ten partner institutions from central and northeastern region of Slovenia, among them five industrial entities. We are focused on specific biological issues of high scientific relevance and of high biomedical (infectious diseases, signaling pathways) and environmental (adaption mechanisms of extremofiles) importance.
D.02 Establishment of a research centre, laboratory, study course, association
COBISS.SI-ID: 0000000Prof. Jože Pungerčar had an invited lecture at the international scientific meeting, where he presented the latest results of our study of the molecular mechanism of presynaptic phospholipase neurotoxins using a cellular model of motoneurons and the actual neuromuscular (in vivo) system. For the fist time, it has been clearly shown, that these neurotoxins are able to internalize into the cells of motoneurons, where they enzymatically act on various cellular membranes and bind to certain intracellular target/binding proteins, thus interfering with their physiological action.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 512085305Assist. Prof. Toni Petan received in 2010 Lapanje Award for Young Scientists, which is granted by the Slovenian Biochemical Society to a young member for outstanding achievements in the field of biochemical sciences.
E.01 National awards
COBISS.SI-ID: 0000000