Facebook Instagram Twitter RSS Feed PodBean Back to top on side

News

Mgr. Ivana Nemčovičová, PhD.,

How to get the better of a virus

14. 6. 2018 | 1436 visits
How to get the better of a virus
She has several exchanges, four grants in her pocket and interesting publications in under her career belt. Thanks to one of them (an expert study in PLoS Pathogens magazine), the prestigious Nature Reviews mentioned her research. Five years ago, the Slovak media was also interested in her work. Meanwhile Mgr. Ivana Nemcovičová, PhD., took advantage of the possibilities offered by the Slovak Academy of Sciences within the framework of the SASPRO project to continue her work on cytomegalovirus (a herpes virus that threatens in particular people with impaired immunity). This she is doing as Head of the Virology Department of Virology Institute of the SAS Biomedical Center. "Our project also has application potential," she says. "The virus proteins we are studying will lead us to the development of antiviral drugs."
She graduated from the Department of Mathematics and Physics at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of PJ Šafárik University in Košice, doctoral studies in biophysics at the Institute of Physical Biology of the University of South Bohemia, post-doctoral study at the SAS Chemical Institute, later at the Vienna Glycogiology Center, and from 2009 to 2013 at La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology (Institute of Allergology and Immunology in La Jolle) in America.
The topic of viral immune modulators has been selected from several offered by the laboratories. ̎It actually began with my arrival." Why this topic? "If the immune system is a wonder, then viruses are an even bigger one because they can take it over," says the scientist. "They can mutate, constantly adapt to what our body creates to protect our cells. They mimic the human body's own molecules, take their shape, mimic the structure, virus proteins then capture our own proteins and prevent the immune response, " she explains.
Ivan Nemcovičová has continued on the topic having returned to Slovakia. She took advantage of the opportunity offered by SASPRO and submitted a SAS project (Modulation of Immune Response by Cytomegalovirus and Its Immunotherapeutic Potential).
(pod)
Photo: (sob)
(Abstract. Extended version at Akadémia/Správy SAV 3/2018)