At the 8th UERN Conference in Yerevan (Armenia) (8-10 November, 2023), researcher Dr. Rossella Castagna received the USERN medal for outstanding young researchers and was appointed USERN Junior Ambassador for Latvia.

10.11.2023.

ERA chair holder Dr. Emilio Parisini and researcher Dr. Rossella Castagna delivered invited talks as keynote speakers at the 8th USERN Conference in Yerevan (Armenia) (8-10 November, 2023). USERN stands for “Universal Scientific Education and Research Network”.

10.11.2023.

PhD student Shapla Bhattacharya has attended the FEBS Advanced Practical and Lecture Course “Computational Approaches to Understanding and Engineering Enzyme Catalysis” in Zagreb, Croatia (24-29 September, 2023). At this prestigious FEBS course, Shapla won the best poster award.

02.10.2023.

The group members Dr. Teodors Panteļejevs, Anastasija Rudņickiha, Laura Odiņa and Atis Jēkabsons actively participated in the European Researchers’ Night event that was held at the LIOS on September 29^th 2023.

02.10.2023.

Researcher Dr. Rossella Castagna has been awarded a Horizon Europe EIC Pathfinder 2023 grant titled “PHOTOTHERAPORT: luminescent implants as ports for light-based therapies”. The coordinator of the project is Prof. Pau Gorostiza (IBEC, Barcelona, Spain).

LIOS role in the project is partner unit and the principal investigator of the LIOS unit will be Dr. Rossella Castagna.

22.09.2023.

From September 18th to 19th, the Latvian Institute of Organic Synthesis (LIOS) hosted the BioDrug conference, dedicated to recent advances in structural biology and drug discovery. The event took place in Riga and brought together 12 distinguished speakers and over 80 participants.

20.09.2023.

On  June 02, 2023 Laura Maija Odina and Martins Kalnins in the Faculty of Biology of the University of Latvia successfully defending their master's thesis.

Laura Maija Odina's  thesis title was “Functional characterization of novel Plasmodium falciparum choline kinase inhibitors”, supervisor: Dr. Emilio Parisini. Martins Kalnins thesis title was “Towards the development of selective modulators of cadherin-mediated cell-cell adhesion” Supervisors: Dr. Emilio Parisini, Dr. Teodors Pantelejevs.

Congratulations to MSc graduates Laura Maija Odina and MSc Martins Kalnins!

02.06.2023.

ERA chair holder Dr. Emilio Parisini gave an invited talk at the “Alliance4Life” conference “Health and the Environment”- Łodz (Poland), 25-26/04/2023. Title of the talk: “Engineering of a fructosyl peptide oxidase enzyme for biomedical applications”.

28.04.2023.

ERA chair holder Dr. Emilio Parisini and Researcher Dr. Rossella Castagna participated in the “Biotechnology Breakfast” event organized by the Biocatalysis Foundation in cooperation with the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia (LIAA) in the framework of the DEEP TECH Atelier, which was held in Riga on 21/04/2023.

24.04.2023.

The Ambassador of Italy to Latvia Alessandro Monti visited the new Biotechnology department on 19/04/2023.

20.04.2023.

The new Biotechnology department was officially inaugurated on 29/03/2023 by the Latvian Prime Minister Artūrs Krišjānis Kariņš.

30.03.2023.

Researcher Dr. Rossella Castagna has been awarded a bilateral Latvian-French Hubert Curien partnership grant (OSMOSE 2022). Title of the project: “Multimodal electrospun nanofibers for “minute”-trapping and removal of bacteria in water (FIBOMAG)”. Bilateral project France (Nantes University - Prof. Elena Ishow) and Latvia (LIOS – Dr. Rossella Castagna).

The publication by Dr. Nikhil Agrawal and Dr. Emilio Parisini “Early Stages of Misfolding of PAP248-286 at two different pH values: An Insight from Molecular Dynamics Simulations' in the Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal has been featured in several Latvian online news magazines:

• nra.lv (read)
• la.lv (read)
• Baltijas balss (read)

Scientific publication is available: Agrawal,N.; Parisini, E. Early stages of misfolding of PAP248-286 at two different pH values: An insight from molecular dynamics simulations. Comput. Struct. Biotechnol. J. 2022, 20, 4892-4901. DOI: 10.1016/j.csbj.2022.08.060

01.11.2022.

The group members Dr. Nikhil Agrawal, Dr. Rossella Castagna Shapla Bhattacharya, Anastasija Rudnickiha, Laura Odina and Giorga Bollo del Rio actively participated in the “European Researchers’ Night” event that was held at the LIOS on September 30^th 2022.

Dr. Teodors Pantelejevs won the best poster prize at the 2^nd Drug Discovery Conference held in Riga, Latvia, 22 – 24 September 2022. This prize, which was sponsored by the journal Crystals (MDPI), was given for the best poster featuring structural biology data.

Dr. Alfonso Gautieri (Politecnico di Milano, Italy) delivered a 1-week course on molecular modelling at the LIOS (5-9 Sept. 2022). The course featured a combination of 5 theoretical lectures and 5 hands-on sessions.

ERA chair holder Dr. Emilio Parisini was appointed Assistant Professor (tenure track) at the University of Bologna (Italy) - 01/09/2022. Dr. Emilio Parisini will hold a dual appointment (LIOS and University of Bologna).

Erasmus+ student Giorgia Bollo del Rio from the University of Genova (Italy) joined the Biotechnology group at the LIOS to do her Master thesis from August 2022 until February 2023 (projected).

Congratulations to Shapla Bhattacharya, PhD student in the Biotechnology group, on winning the best poster award at the EMBO practical school on 'High throughput protein production and crystallization' held in Marseille, France (4-12 July 2022).
Congratulations, Shapla!!

From 15 to 17 June, 2022 the Biotechnology group participate in the FEBS3+ Conference of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Biochemical Societies, organized by the Estonian Biochemical Society in Tallinn, Estonia.

Oral presentations by: Dr. Emilio Parisini (Principal Investigator, Head of the Biotechnology group) “Drugging the undruggable: towards the development of selective modulators of cadherin-mediated cell-cell adhesion” and Dr. Teodors Pantelejevs (Researcher) “A conserved mechanism of interferon signalling antagonism in poxviruses and paramyxoviruses”.

BSc student Linda Legzdina graduated on 06/06/2022 in the Faculty of Biology of the University of Latvia discussing a thesis titled: “Towards the design of engineered enzymes for protein deglycation” (Mark: 9) (Supervisor: Dr. Emilio Parisini). Congratulations, Linda!!

Participation in the awarded COST action CA21111 (2022-2026) – OneHealthdrugs – “One health drugs against parasitic vector borne diseases in Europe and beyond”. Dr. Parisini has been nominated LIOS representative in the Managing Committee for this international collaborative grant.

Dr. Emilio Parisini has been invited to deliver a lecture at the XXII Edoardo Amaldi Conference 'Nuclear Risks and Arms Control: Problems and Progress in the Time of Pandemics and War', which was held at the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome (Italy) on 6-8 Apr. 2022.
Title of Dr. Parisini's oral presentation: 'International cooperation to tackle future pandemics'.

Dr. Emilio Parisini has been elected as the Latvia representative in the Scientific Committee of the European Society of Applied Biocatalysis (ESAB) (24 March 2022)