On 28 November, join us for an online lecture by Prof. Łukasz Opaliński, winner of 2023 NCN Award, who will talk about how cellular processes can be harnessed to develop innovative cancer therapies. The session is organised within the framework of the “Science at the Centre” series.
Prof. Łukasz Opaliński is a molecular biologist working at the University of Wrocław, who won the 2023 NCN Award for Life Sciences in October. On Tuesday (28 November), he will deliver a lecture entitled “Multivalency in biology and biomedicine: how to harness natural cellular processes to develop innovative cancer therapies”. The lecture will be streamed on the YouTube channel of the Copernicus Center for Interdisciplinary Research.
Cells are separated from the external environment by a cell membrane, which ensures their integrity and allows them to retain multidimensional control over their internal processes. However, they are not isolated structures; they are in continuous communication with the surrounding environment. Thanks to receptor proteins embedded in the cell membrane, cells recognise external signals (arriving in the form of, e.g., proteins or other macromolecules), decipher the information they encode and convert it into a precise cellular response. Among the most important receptors found on the surface of human cells are the fibroblast growth factor receptors (FGFR), which respond to the fibroblast growth factor (FGF) and regulate processes such as cell division, motility and death. The FGF/FGFR system is crucial for the growth and homeostasis of the human body and abnormalities in it lead to a number of diseases, including cancer.
“Most biochemical processes inside living cells involve intermolecular interactions. The same is true for the FGF/FGFR system; the FGF present in the serum is recognised by FGFR and their interaction leads to the formation of an active FGF/FGFR complex. In a typical FGFR activation mechanism, what we see is a monovalent interaction: one FGF molecule interacts with a single FGFR molecule. In my lecture, however, I will focus on multivalent interactions that involve many copies of the same macromolecules all at once, as well as their importance for cellular signalling and transport. The latest research by our team has shown that such multivalent interactions do occur naturally between the FGFR, the FGF and proteins from the galectin family, forming an additional signalling pathway inside the cell, with an important impact on FGFR transport”, the scientist has told us.
Opaliński will also tell us how we can mimic natural processes that involve multivalent interactions to design targeted cancer therapies.
The live stream starts at 6 pm. The lecture will be followed by a Q&A session, during which you will be able to ask your questions via chat.
Professor Opaliński’s lecture will be the second talk this year, and the eleventh overall, delivered within the framework of the “Science at the Centre” series organised together by the NCN and the Copernicus Center. In mid-November, we met with Dr Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska, another NCN Award winner (for Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences), who took us on a guided tour of the “Recovered Territories”.
Additional materials:
Lecture by Dr Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska: announcement and video