Research

We advance precision medicine by applying cutting-edge genomic technologies to cancer and rare diseases. In oncology, we study genomic and transcriptomic alterations in solid tumors to improve diagnosis and guide individualized therapy. In rare diseases, we focus on undiagnosed pediatric patients to overcome diagnostic dead ends, shorten the diagnostic odyssey, and uncover underlying genetic causes.

Our key questions include:

• Which genomic alterations drive the onset and progression of an individual disease?
• How does the disease reprogram cellular biology or epigenetics?
• What is the functional impact of novel variants found in patients?

While our work often starts with broad, hypothesis-free analyses, it quickly generates specific biological questions. We address these using functional genomics to dissect mechanisms, validate candidate genes, and explore therapeutic vulnerabilities. We are developing a drug repurposing pipeline that leverages AI-based approaches, followed by experimental validation and clinical application in individual patients.

Our methodological portfolio includes next-generation and long-read sequencing (including rapid trio setting), RNA sequencing, single-cell and spatial transcriptomics, and methylome profiling. Functional genomics approaches enable us to uncover disease mechanisms. What sets our work apart is our uniquely close integration with the Center for Precision Medicine at University Hospital Brno — the only center of its kind in the Czech Republic.

We are a joint research group of the Department of Biology, Faculty of Medicine and CEITEC at the Masaryk University.

FOR MORE DETAILS VISIT OUR NEW WEB!

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List of our current team members can be found here.

Our international collaborations:

MD Anderson Cancer Center Houston, Texas, US - prof. George A. Calin, MD, PhD
University of Ferrara, Italy - prof. Massimo Negrini, PhD
Medical University of Graz, Austria - Assoc. Prof. Martin Pichler, MD, PhD
Beckman Research Institute, City of Hope, California, US - prof. Ajay Goel, PhD, AGAF
Charité University Hospital, Berlin, Germany - prof. Klaus Jung, PhD
Laboratory of Bacterial Pahogenesis and Immunology, Rockefeller University, NY, US - prof. Vincent Fischetti, PhD
Collaboration with Czech and ESFRI infrastructures
National Institute for Cancer Research (project funded from program EXCELES) - collaboration within NICR