FIRST TEAM grant awarded to Maria Górna

Maria Górna is one of the laureates of the 5th competition in the prestigious FIRST TEAM programme of the Foundation for Polish Science. Maria's project "Proteolysis-targeting strategies in bacterial systems for functional studies of proteins and improvement of antibiotics" will receive over 2 million PLN funding, which will allow us to establish a new team to work on targeted protein degradation in bacteria. The project aims at development of compounds that can be used to study the function of bacterial proteins in a reverse genetics approach, and with the potential to transform the field of antibiotic discovery. Four experienced researchers and three students will work towards this aim in an interdisciplinary collaboration with our neighbours at the Department of Chemistry, our research partner Ben Luisi (Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge) and our economic partner WPD Pharmaceuticals.

In the light of the rising threat of antimicrobial resistance, we are very excited to launch this innovative project and grateful to the Foundation for the generous funding. We hope to contribute valuable tools to the research community as well as novel antibiotics to help fight bacterial infections.

Maria's ambitious project was highlighted in the Press Release of the Foundation of Polish Science (available in Polish).