News

We are proud to share that Assoc. Prof. Witold Szaflarski from PUMS Department of Histology and Embryology has been awarded a 12-month research scholarship within the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange NAWA Mieczysław Bekker's program.

The scholarship will fund 1-year long scientific research focusing on protein biosynthesis with the use of cryogenic electron microscopy that dr. Szaflarski will conduct at University of Hamburg (Germany) under the supervision of prof. Daniel Wilson.

This new project will build on dr. Szaflarski's earlier work on nucleolar integrity maintenance during the stress caused by anti-cancer drugs. This research, conducted by a team of scientists from PUMS Histology and Embryology Department in cooperation with a team from Boston University (USA) lead by prof. Shawn M. Lyons, has shown that the first step of ribosome production in the nucleolus (47S rRNA synthesis) is a stress-dependent regulatory event whose inhibition maintains nucleolar integrity. Unprocessed rRNA is stored within the nucleolus, and when stress resolves, it re-enters the ribosome biogenesis pathway. This line of research is very promising for potential clinical application as it could pave the way to a new type of anti-cancer drugs that could break the nucleolus protection of cancer cells. The results were just published in Nucleic Acids Research journal: https://academic.oup.com/nar/advance-article/doi/10.1093/nar/gkab1231/6470679.

Congratulations!