II Division of Biological and Agricultural Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences, awarded the team from the Nencki Institute for outstanding scientific achievements.

The prize was awarded to Karolina Stępniak, PhD, Magdalena Machnicka, PhD, Jakub Mieczkowski, PhD, DSc, Marta Maleszewska, PhD, Adria-Jaume Roura, PhD, Bartosz Wilczyński, PhD, DSc, Bartosz Wojtaś, PhD, DSc, Prof. Bożena Kamińska-Kaczmarek, PhD, DSc for the scientific achievement: "The role of epigenetic disorders and selected gene expression regulatory pathways in the pathogenesis of malignant gliomas".

The results of recent studies point to the genetic, epigenetic and cellular heterogeneity of malignant gliomas as a significant problem in the treatment of these tumours. The introduction of whole transcriptome sequencing and single-cell transcriptomics technologies has revealed a number of abnormalities resulting in a different genotype, glioma microenvironment, and anti-tumor responses. 

The work presented for the award by scientists from the Nencki Institute was performed using modern next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies and state-of-the-art computational methods. The results have been published in prestigious international journals: Nature Communications 2021, Clinical Epigenetics 2021, Glia 2023. 

This interdisciplinary research has used novel targeted DNA sequencing technologies and transcriptome and epigenome analyses to answer many previously unanswered questions and provided extremely important data on the pathogenesis of gliomas in the context of their invasiveness and resistance to therapy.

Polish Academy of Sciences Divisions awards are granted annually for particularly important research findings published in prestigious scientific journals.

Congratulations!