IOCB Boston

🎓 Find your PhDestiny – IOCB Prague is looking for bright minds in chemistry and life sciences ► uochb.cz/phd 📺 Join a vibrant, international environment at a prestigious research institution, equipped with a cutting-edge technology and connected to leading research centers worldwide — as well as key industry partners. #PhDatIOCB #PhD #PhDlife

🍂 Exciting news this Boston fall! Join us on Oct 28 for Evening Salon: Translational Chemistry — From Molecule to Medicine. An evening of science, conversation & connection — where Czech chemistry meets Boston biotech. @IOCBPrague, @IOCBTech, and PharmTheon.✌️ Get your free ticket here: bit.ly/3Jmde9V #IOCBBoston #Biotech #DrugDiscovery

First day of 2025—let's kick it off strong! 🔥@DMSabatini @IOCBPrague

Happy New Year from @IOCBPrague and @IOCBBoston! May 2025 bring you new bonds and groundbreaking research!

We are looking for a new, great colleague! Do you know of someone who might be interested? 😊 Details are awaiting you here: lnkd.in/eBZQ8MG9 Please apply using the provided email address only; thank you!

Great to see the strengthening of Polish and Czech collaboration @IOCBPrague @IOCBBoston @konvalinka_jan @A_Chacinska 🇵🇱🇨🇿

Thank you Jan. Honored to receive this grant to enable our mTOR work @IOCBPrague. Many thanks to the IOCB grants office for walking me through a new process and friends who gave me model grants for inspiration. And congratulations Vaclav!

One of the main challenges of contemporary medicine is posed by the resistance of pathogens to antibiotics. An important step in countering it has now been made by @tm_kouba and colleagues from @IOCBPrague, in collaboration with researchers led by Libor Krásný from the Institute of Microbiology and Jan Dohnálek of @IBT_CAS @CzechAcademy. Leveraging advanced #cryoEM and biochemical methods, they have managed to describe how mycobacteria defend themselves against the antibiotic #rifampicin. One key component that allows a bacterium to dodge the action of the antibiotic rifampicin is a protein called HelD. It effectively protects bacterial #RNApolymerase, which is the enzyme taking care of the transcription of genetic information from DNA to RNA, a process that is crucial for the survival of all bacteria. The HelD protein acts as a cellular bodyguard. Whenever there's a snag during the transcription of DNA, HelD comes to the rescue, and this is also what happens after the administration of rifampicin, the role of which is to inhibit RNA polymerase. Without HelD, the whole process would grind to a halt and the bacterium would perish. HelD does not yield even to such a powerful antibiotic as rifampicin, which is used, for example, to treat tuberculosis or severe pneumonia. Until recently, researchers had assumed that HelD played a crucial role in antibiotic resistance. However, they have found that it is even more important for bacteria than it seemed. The HelD protein not only sets RNA polymerase free from the effects of the antibiotic but also ensures the ‘recycling’ of this enzyme, which is crucial for the functioning of every organism. It achieves this by actually moving RNA polymerase to the transcription initiation site on DNA, allowing it to resume transcription. The bacterium can thus start multiplying again. 📜 Read the original @NatureComms study: doi.org/10.1038/s41467… 📰 Read more about the study: uochb.cz/en/news/656/sc…

Congrats to @vaclav_veverka and @DMSabatini of @IOCBPrague on their #GAČR EXPRO grants totaling CZK 50 million for the next five years!

When it's spooky season, but you want to introduce the new and wonderful team of @IOCBBoston: (The complete who's who with matching portraits is available at iocbboston.org)

“Imagine you’re launching a local newspaper, and Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein show up at the opening party.”✌️ This is how @konvalinka_jan characterized the presence of several star guests at @IOCBBoston's launch, particularly the visit of Professor Harvey Lodish from @MIT. Prof. Lodish is one of the world’s finest biologists and the author of the seminal Molecular Cell Biology textbook. (Two of his trainees have received the Nobel Prize, and six have been elected to the US National Academy of Sciences or the Institutes of Medicine.) Read more here: biology.mit.edu/profile/harvey… From the donor’s side, we had the pleasure of welcoming Ms. @jeanne_ackman MD, an Assistant Professor of Radiology at @harvardmed and a radiologist at #massgeneral, one of the world’s finest facilities. Ms. Ackman represented Mr. @BillAckman, whose generous financial support enabled the entire operation. To make matters even more joyful, the @IOCBBoston and @IOCBPrague teams welcomed Dr. Alexander Wlodawer from the Center for Cancer Research at @theNCI. A legend in the field of protein crystallography, Mr. Wlodawer is a dear friend of our Institute. Other stars will have to make do without their paragraphs this time :( Social media dictates brevity, and we already failed the rule big time. Good news is, in our case, it’s more of a function than an anomaly…

This is hugely impressive: In an unprecedented move for a Czech scientific organisation, the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry has just opened a lab in the US. Officials say they hope to one day win a Nobel Prize.

Česká věda míří vysoko!🚀 Nová laboratoř Ústav organické chemie a biochemie AV ČR propojí naše vědce s MIT, Harvard Medical School a dalšími špičkovými 🇺🇸 institucemi. Vyspělá infrastruktura a spolupráce s elitou posílí pozici naší vědy na mezinárodním poli. Jsem rád u toho!

So it's done – @IOCBBoston, our new branch in the USA, officially opened, marking a major milestone for Czech science. The event was attended by prominent philanthropists and representatives from Harvard, MIT, Charles University, the Czech Ministry of Education, and the Czech Embassy in the USA. A truly memorable day! Read more and see more pictures: uochb.cz/en/news/654/io…

Truly memorable day. Meeting Harvey Lodish, Bob Weinberg, Hidde Plough, Steve Fesik or Jeanne Ackmann on one spot was quite a treat…

Experience the Grand Opening of @IOCBBoston in 80 seconds 🥳 Friday was an amazing day and a resounding success. Share a bit of that energy with us, will you? We did our best to bridge 🇨🇿 Czech and 🇺🇸 American #science in the company of @konvalinka_jan, @zenisek_m, @kralickovaM, @DMsabatini and @DWheelerMD_PhD, among others. We met Boston's best, thanked our colleagues, laughed and discussed future collaborations. It appears there will be many <3 Thank you, everyone, for being there and supporting us! @IOCBPrague #IOCBBoston #ScienceWithoutBorders Photos: Eddie Huynh | New Day Studio Boston

Week of 🇺🇸visit of minister @zenisek_m! From innovation talks at @nyuniversity 🗽 to visits at @FollowStevens, @BrownUniversity @Harvard & @MISTIatMIT 🔬, and the exciting opening of @IOCBBoston 🧪. So much inspiration and follow-ups ahead! 🚀 #CzechScience #USCollaboration