This year Vilnius University celebrates its 445th anniversary. To mark the occasion, the VU Life Sciences Center (VU LSC) organised two exhibitions, two lectures and a special tour.
On April 15, the President of the Board of the European Innovation Council (EIC) Michiel Scheffer, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (RTD) at the EIC Stéphane Ouaki visited the Life Sciences Center (LSC) together with their colleagues Vilma Radvilaite (EIC Project Adviser, EISMEA) and Donata Pečiukėnienė (NCP Unit, EIC & EIE NCP Programme Coordinator, RCL).
The Director of the LSC Prof. Daumantas Matulis, the Chairman of the LSC Council Prof. Virginijus Šikšnys, and the Chairwoman of the Senate of Vilnius University Prof. Eglė Lastauskienė introduced the guests to the Life Sciences Center and the members of the innovation ecosystem.
D. Matulis has stressed that innovation and its translation into practice is a very important part of the LSC's work.
The guests were interested in Lithuania's top-level scientific achievements, translational research, and incubation & acceleration programs and their opportunities.
Photo credits: VU LSC archive
Research into redox-active drugs, their analogs, and precursors is ongoing in the laboratory of Research Professor Narimantas Čėnas. "These are often not the kind of preparations that we get in the pharmacy, but their research allows us to predict new possibilities for the application of drugs or their side effects," says the professor.
N. Čėnas' scientific activity has been going on for almost 45 years, and during that time he managed to carry out many interesting kinds of research - the researcher currently often collaborates with colleagues not only from Lithuania but also from France, New Zealand, Japan, and Uruguay.
At the annual exhibition Career & Studies in Lithuania 2024, Vilnius University Life Sciences Center (VU LSC) introduced the latest and most relevant information about the study programs available at the Center, and invited to learn about enzymes, drug development, and bioremediation at the Innovation Space.
Research and scientific publications of high international level by scientists of Vilnius University Life Sciences Center (VU LSC) are not complete without doctoral students. The best of them are awarded scholarships named after the world-renowned Prof. Virginijus Šikšnys, established together with the agency Go Vilnius. This year, the nominal scholarship was awarded to PhD students Laurita Klimkaitė and Kamilė Mikalauskaitė for exceptional results of scientific activity.
Genes in our body should work like harmonious orchestra, but it happens that individual performers get out of balance and play out of harmony. It makes us sick. In this case, the orchestra consists of over 20 thousand genes carried by 40 trillion cells, and scientists are developing tools with which we can dissect each cell separately, says Vilnius University Life Sciences Center (VU LSC) researcher Prof. Linas Mažutis.
Dr. Ina Gorban has joined the ranks of PhDs at the Vilnius University Life Sciences Center (VU LSC). After defending her thesis "Bibionomorpha and Tipulomorpha (Diptera: Nematocera) Flies in the Most Common Deciduous Deadwood", she was awarded a PhD in zoology. Congratulations!
The BalticSeaBioMed network meeting took place at the LSC on March19–20. The network brings together the Universities of Eastern Finland, Southern Denmark, Turku, Vilnius University as well as Åbo Academi and Karolinska Institutet.
Through problem-based learning and state-of-the-art biomedical methodologies, the network helps students to develop the skills and competencies needed for future employment and a successful career. The activities are funded by Nordplus, the Nordic-Baltic International Cooperation Programme.
The Vilnius University Life Sciences Center (VU LSC) hosted science officers from the United States Embassies in the Baltic States and Denmark.
The structure of a protein is like a photo of it, allowing you to take a closer look at the world of molecules. And researchers have to work hard to see that. Structural information about the proteins is also very important in the field of bacterial antiviral defense systems, the study and application of which have already been awarded the Nobel Prize twice - for gene and genome editing tools. The latter is already used in Europe for the treatment of sickle cell anemia. We currently know more than 100 bacterial antiviral defense systems, which were studied and discovered by the aforementioned tools. "Only a few of them have been characterized. Therefore, we do not yet know what we will find and how researchers will come up with ways to apply them", says structural biology researcher Dr. Giedrė Tamulaitienė of Vilnius University (VU) Life Sciences Center (LSC).
Virus researchers of Vilnius University (VU) Life Sciences Center Dr. Gytis Dudas and Dr. Allison Black from the USA have published a book The Applied Genomic Epidemiology Handbook: A Practical Guide to Leveraging Pathogen Genomic Data in Public Health. The book is intended for public health professionals who are interested in genomic epidemiology or who want to start applying it in their work. The authors introduce the readers to the essential principles of genomic epidemiology, tools and the implementation and application of genomic monitoring systems in practice.
Vilnius University Life Sciences Center has become one of the new test centers in NATO transatlantic network. Today DIANA’s network expanded from 11 to 23 accelerator sites and from 90 to 182 test centers in 28 allied countries.
On March 6, the Life Sciences Center, together with its partners Northtown Vilnius and 2AM Health, hosted the opening event of an entrepreneurship program StartBIO: from Lab to Business.
