Marián Hajdúch

In the field of drug research and development, the group focuses mainly on anticancer drugs from the group of low-molecular chemical compounds and natural substances. We test the biological activity of synthesized chemical compounds, in the case of biologically active substances, we identify the mechanisms of action through the methods of chemical proteomics and genetics. In the case of known molecular targets, we perform high-throughput screening and look for pharmacological inhibitors or activators of the biological activity of the target structure or phenotype. In the next part, we focus in cooperation with medicinal chemists on optimizing the effectiveness and pharmacological properties of candidate molecules. Promising compounds go further into pre-clinical testing and possibly also into verification clinical evaluations.

In the field of biomarkers, we focus mainly on their identification, validation and implementation for diagnostic, prognostic and predictive purposes in cancer research and for routine clinical use. These biomarkers can be used in situations directly related to patient care, drug development and research. To this end, we leverage our foundation in the identification and validation of biomarkers at the multiomic level through comprehensive profiling and analysis of the genome, transcriptome, proteome and metabolome. We perform comprehensive genomic, metabolic and proteomic analysis, comprehensive analysis of biomolecules that modulate signaling and regulatory pathways in healthy and tumor cells. Selected validated biomarkers are subsequently developed as diagnostic kits or directly licensed to industrial partners.

Research objectives

1. Identification of new targets for antitumor drugs by studying molecular processes in cancer, infectious and rare diseases.
2. Research and development of candidate drugs for cancer.
3. Research and development of diagnostic, prognostic and predictive tumor biomarkers, especially with the use of non-invasive sampling techniques.
4. Search for new translational models of human cancer diseases in vitro and in vivo (tumor spheroids, organoids, tumor xenografts of primary patient tumors).
5. Utilization and comprehensive processing of biomedical data, development of data stewardship tools and implementation of artificial intelligence methods for data analysis.