Dalia Smalakytė has defended her thesis entitled "Insights into type III CRISPR-Cas immunity: mechanisms of Csm6 deactivation and a comprehensive characterization of the Lon-SAVED effector" for the degree of Doctor of Science in Biochemistry.
Algirdas Noreika has defended his thesis entitled "Structural and functional studies of adsorption complex of the Klebsiella infecting bacteriophage RaK2" for the degree of Doctor of Science in Biochemistry.
On June 2nd, the Vilnius University Life Sciences Center (LSC) welcomed a delegation from Igbinedion University, Nigeria.
Agnė Petrošiūtė has defended her thesis entitled "Carbonic anhydrase IX and CCL2-CCR2 axis inhibition evaluation in solid tumors using in vitro cellular and in vivo mouse models" for the degree of Doctor of Science in Biochemistry.
On May 27th, the Vilnius University Life Sciences Center (VU LSC) welcomed a delegation from the United Kingdom, including Prof. Andrew James Boulton (Manchester University, University of Miami), Prof. Mike Griffiths (CEO, Advanced Oxygen Therapy Inc), Prof. Sudhesh Kumar (President, Association for Innovation, Research and Technology Organisations; Vice-President (Health) at Warwick University), Prof. Neil Reeves (Lancaster University), and Prof. Loretta Vileikyte (Lancaster University). The guests were welcomed by VU LSC Director Dr. Arvydas Lubys, Prof. Urtė Neniškytė (Group Leader at the VU LSC–EMBL Partnership Institute and Member of the VU Council), Prof. Daiva Baltriukienė (Head of the Doctoral School), and Julius Gagilas (Deputy Director for Business Collaboration and Infrastructure).
On May 27, 2025, the Ambassador of the Republic of Moldova to Lithuania, Emil Druc, visited the Vilnius University Life Sciences Center (VU LSC).
The Baltic and Polish School of Immunology (BPSI 2025), organised by researchers from Vilnius University Life Sciences Center (VU LSC) together with the Lithuanian Society for Immunology, brought together nearly one hundred young scientists from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, and Ukraine this year. The event emphasized four key topics: host-pathogen interactions, primary immunodeficiencies, sterile inflammation, and cancer immunology.
This year, the annual Life Sciences Center (LSC) Scientific Conference took place at the Vilnius University Medical Sciences Center – a new space that symbolically emphasized the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration between the life and medical sciences.
On May 15–16, the first off-site retreat for PhD students of the Life Sciences Center took place at Vilnius University’s Puvočiai Field Station. The Doctoral School organized the event in collaboration with PhD student representatives. It brought together doctoral students from various life sciences disciplines for shared experiences, personal development, and community building.
On May 5–9, the Life Sciences Center welcomed two early-career researchers – Katarzyna Ciapała and Katarzyna Pawlik-Szczerba – from the Maj Institute of Pharmacology, Polish Academy of Sciences, based in Kraków.
Lithuania’s name is being heard among global innovation leaders - a team of researchers from Vilnius University’s Life Sciences Center (VU LSC) has reached the finals of the prestigious European Patent Office (EPO) competition, Young Investors Prize 2025. Among the top ten finalists - selected from more than 450 candidates worldwide - are Lithuanians Laurynas Karpus, Vykintas Jauniškis, and Irmantas Rokaitis, co-founders of the biotech start-up Biomatter.
Researchers at Vilnius University’s Life Sciences Center (VU LSC), together with colleagues from the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel) and Harvard Medical School (USA), have uncovered a previously unknown type of immune signaling molecule produced by the Thoeris II defence system in bacteria - a significant finding published today in Nature. The study, entitled TIR domains produce histidine-ADPR as an immune signal in bacteria, was led by Dr. Giedrė Tamulaitienė’s research group.
Imagine that each person’s genetic information is like a library, where hundreds of carefully written books hold everything about who we are, from eye color to susceptibility to certain diseases. If even a single mistake slips into these books, it can lead to serious health problems. Correcting such errors was impossible for a long time, but that changed with the advent of gene-editing technology. The gene scissors discovered by Prof. Virginijus Šikšnys and his team at Vilnius University work like a precise editor, allowing scientists to correct DNA errors like editing text on a computer.
