Anna Ligasová: She sees biology as an endless series of fascinating puzzles
Anna Ligasová is trying to decipher some of those puzzles – especially the behaviour of cancer cells – at the Institute of Molecular and Translational Medicine (IMTM). She has helped develop a method that allows rapid analysis of how different substances affect cells, which is crucial, for example, for the development of new drugs and testing their safety. She considers it very important that the research she and her colleagues conduct have real benefits for patients. That is why she would like to see a world where there are smarter “bridges” between academic research and practice.
Anna is a cell biology graduate from Comenius University in Bratislava and has a doctorate from Charles University. She is currently engaged in research that could improve the treatment of blood cancers, such as leukaemia. She specifically focuses on one of the key drugs in chemotherapy, cytarabine. “To put it very simply, I am trying to understand how cancer cells process this drug and how they defend against it, so that we can find a way to break through their defences and increase the effectiveness of the therapy,” she explained.
Her second research topic is related to repairing damaged DNA. Chemotherapy often works by massively damaging the DNA of cancer cells so that they cannot multiply further. However, cells are able to call on their own “repair teams” to attempt to repair this damage and survive the treatment.
“And here comes a fascinating paradox. Behind the formation of a tumour lies a defect in the repair mechanisms that allows the cell to multiply uncontrollably. When we then try to destroy it with chemotherapy, the same repair mechanisms can become its key advantage, helping it survive the treatment. I am trying to understand these processes in detail so that we can influence them cleverly in the future, e.g. by temporarily “turning them off” at the right time, and thereby significantly increasing the impact of treatment on tumour cells,” added the cell biologist, who is also involved in the development of analytical methods and technologies that can improve, accelerate and reduce the cost of knowledge.
She believes that the path from discovery to the patient should not be as lengthy and rocky as it is today, when many great findings remain “locked in laboratories” because they run into a wall of practical and commercial obstacles. “This is not a dream of less bureaucracy but of greater imagination and courage throughout the system, so that scientific progress is translated into real improvements in our lives as quickly as possible,” she concluded.