It is our pleasure to inform you of the success of Prof. Paweł Kisielow, PhD hab., a beneficiary of the FNP?s MILAB (2004) and MISTRZ/MASTER (2004) programmes. The research results published in Nature magazine (the paper ?Thymus-derived regulatory T cells contribute to tolerance to commensal microbiota?, DOI:10.1038/nature12079) have been honoured with the Life Technologies? Ion Torrent Breakthrough Award 2013. The authors of the award-winning paper include Prof. Kisielow?s former colleagues from the Ludwik Hirszfeld Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Wrocław: Anna Cebula, Piotr Kraj and Leszek Ignatowicz (corresponding author), who currently work at the Center for Biotechnology and Genomic Medicine at Georgia Regents University in Augusta, United States.
The work in question increases our understanding of the role of regulatory T lymphocytes as mediators of immunological tolerance in relation to useful intestinal bacteria that are essential for the proper functioning of the gastrointestinal tract and the whole immune system.
T lymphocytes are a type of white blood cells equipped with individually specific receptors (TCR) thanks to which the immune system is able to identify all the macromolecules (antigens) existing in nature. Regulatory T lymphocytes (T-reg), discovered in the 1990s, are a separate type of T lymphocytes which play a key role in preventing auto-aggressive diseases by maintaining what is known as immunological tolerance. This consists in stopping reactions against healthy cells in the body and also against beneficial intestinal microorganisms. Investigating the role of tT-reg and pT-reg cells in preventing all kinds of auto-immune diseases is of great importance for understanding the mechanism of diseases like colitis and Lesniowski-Crohn disease, for example.
The Life Technologies? Ion Torrent Breakthrough Award honours the most important scientific papers published in the previous year that report ground-breaking research involving the use of Ion Torrent? genome sequencing technology. In future these award-winning papers could contribute to discoveries solving global problems, including those related to health and medicine.
More information about the award
Our sincere congratulations!