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22. Nov. 2023
He never even considered a scientific career in Brno. He worked in America, Austria, and Sweden. Then, he got trapped in Brno because of COVID-19. As the borders were closed, he couldn’t go back to Scandinavia, so he found out about CEITEC quite by accident. In retrospect, he thinks it was fate. He says Brno is the best destination for scientific work.
When did you fall in love with science?
In primary and secondary school, I liked physics, biology and especially chemistry. I participated in various competitions and contests. But it wasn’t until my sophomore year in college, when I started working as a temp in a chemistry lab, basically doing the dirty work for others, that I really got into it. That’s when I fell in love with chemistry, became fascinated with it and knew I wanted to follow the path of a chemist. But even at that time, I was pretty convinced that I wanted to work in the industry. I mean I wanted to do some development, research, but more applied.
Was it a more promising field in your opinion?
In my place of work at the time, yes. I was studying in an industrial city at the University of Rochester in the United States. So the chemical industry seemed more logical to me: there were many opportunities for growth, promising conditions and prospects. But in 2008, the 'famous' economic crisis hit and times were tough. All the companies I knew closed down overnight. I was studying organic semiconductors and writing my thesis on organic LED screens at Kodak when all research stopped. Devices were being thrown away, into dustbins. It was unbelievable and sad because some of them were unique. We rescued some and took them to the University but we didn’t have enough room for everything.
So the economic crisis forced you to change your focus?
I had to rethink my plan because of it, so it rather helped me return to Europe. I started to study for a PhD at a University in Austria where I became interested in researching so-called organic photovoltaic cells. Like the ones we know from roofs but based on organic materials, which I worked with in America. During my PhD, I also focused on natural materials and their electrical properties. In particular, I studied the pigment indigo, the blue colour known from jeans, for example. And that began to take me in a biological direction. I decided to try to use the materials I was studying, initially intended for industrial applications, in biomedicine.
How hard was it to make this fundamental turn a reality?
At that time, my former PhD supervisor had problems with his eye, a detached retina. And I started to learn about the issue; I talked to his surgeon, who luckily had the time to answer my questions. I was intrigued to learn that there were artificial retinas. Those are photo-sensitive replacements based on artificial materials. And it seemed to me that the natural semiconductor materials that I was researching would be ideal for this. I worked intensively on that, I partnered with people who helped me with the biological side of things. They were in electrophysiology, which is a branch of physiology that focuses on the electrical properties of neurons, nerves, the brain, the retina... That, too, was love at first sight.
Did you want to apply the knowledge and perhaps the technical procedures from industrial chemistry to neuroscience? How did the environment react?
They looked at us like we were out of our minds. By then I had finished my PhD and was supervising my first graduate students. I was lucky to have a group of young scientists who were open to such crazy research. We went to the electrophysiology lab, we had our materials, lasers and different light sources, and we started doing experiments. Most people were utterly shocked. Said that lasers were dangerous and asked what we were doing. There was only one group leader who trusted us, the rest of the group “hated us out”. We were expelled, had to set up a new lab away from the others and do biological experiments outside normal working hours, so on weekends. That’s how wild a start it was back in 2015 when I entered the field I’ve been in ever since.
But a year later you were working in Sweden. How did you get there?
I got an offer from a Swedish institution to set up research in molecular medicine. It’s a broad term that I don’t really know what it means. It was about alternative approaches to medicine that are based on investigating the molecular properties of material. They were interested in the retina project. At that time, we had published about it and had one patent. And they found out about it and came up with a tempting offer that was funded by the foundation of the influential Swedish Wallenberg family. A sort of Swedish Bill Gates. They wanted to move all the research to Sweden. I was given money for 5 years and I could take some colleagues with me. I became a group leader for the first time in my life.
What did that mean to you?
On a scientific journey, becoming independent is a major turning point. I had to start from scratch. Fortunately, I had colleagues with me and decent funding thanks to the foundation. I started recruiting people for my first research group. By the end of 2019, I was supervising a dozen postdocs and PhD students and my first PhD student finished his dissertation. By then, I was firmly entrenched in the scientific academic world and knew I was likely to stay there. Although I am also interested in applied research, and I am not opposed to collaborating with companies. On the contrary, I support it and I think it is important.
This was followed by your stint in the Czech Republic. If you hadn’t married a woman from Brno, would you have stayed in Sweden?
Absolutely not. But the question is whether I would have ended up here. Honestly, I don’t think so. Not because it’s not good here, but because I would never have known about it. The only reason I found out there was such a great facility here in Brno is because we used to come here to visit my wife’s family. My wife is a scientist, too. We have worked together on a project in Austria and then in Sweden. At the same time, I don’t want it to sound like I moved to Brno because my wife is Czech. It’s not like that. We were both struck by the pandemic lockdown during our visit here in March 2020. As a Pole, the best I could do was go back to Poland.
So you adapted to the situation again. You seem to be a master of adaptation. You don’t complain, you always try to find a way. Is that how you see it?
We had always planned to return to either the Czech Republic or Poland. Covid just accelerated it. There were several possible paths. Wait for the situation to loosen up and go back to Sweden. I also had an opportunity to work in Austria and Germany. But at that time, I found out about CEITEC and got an offer, funded by the city of Brno, to start a junior group. I also learned then that I had received an ERC grant. And that changed everything. We both decided that CEITEC was the best choice. And we stand by that. The conditions for science are great here. I think we’ll get to that later.
I’m sure. Does CEITEC BUT have everything you need for research to be competitive on the international scene?
Yes, without a doubt. We actually do research on the equipment that we manufacture here. CEITEC Nano is key to this. When I first looked at the CEITEC website, this is what caught my eye. The clean rooms, CEITEC Nano and the cutting-edge equipment and possibilities. It’s a much better facility than I had in Sweden, for example. We are working at a much higher level here. So the key things are here, that is the production and the testing of devices. However, experimenting on animals, that doesn’t happen at BUT and it won’t happen. There is no infrastructure, no ethics committee... But the great advantage of Brno is that there are plenty of institutions that make that possible. We don’t have to go anywhere, not even to Prague. I wasn’t used to that, I always had to spend hours on the road. Now I have everything I need in one city. The possibilities are endless.
What kind of research are you doing now?
In our research group, we focus on three main areas. The first one I’ve been working on since Austria, the photo-sensitive stimulators. These are either whole devices or just particles that are powered by red light and are able to stimulate the nervous system, especially the vagus nerve located in the neck. We are now in the research phase of experiments on animals – rodents now and we are going to test pigs. The main objective is to treat Crohn’s disease and similar inflammatory autoimmune diseases in which electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve can significantly reduce pathogenic autoimmune symptoms. With the help of light, we would like to achieve a much simpler and less invasive therapy.
And the other areas?
The second area involves using direct current to induce physiological changes in the body. This research came about somewhat by accident when we were looking at side effects of neurostimulants in the body. We wanted to see if they could be used in a way that would be beneficial. Specifically, I’m referring to the oxygen reduction phenomenon which I’ve discovered occurs in the electrode area. The product of oxygen reduction is hydrogen peroxide, which is essentially a disinfectant.
Is that what your new project, the Faraday Scalpel, funded by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic (GAČR), is about?
It’s related. The project is about electrosurgery. We want to use direct current to do precision microsurgery to remove problematic areas of the brain. And not just the brain, but the peripheral nerves, too. Current is already used today but it works in a different way: electrodes are inserted, or there are electrodes on the scalpel, and the whole phenomenon – the removal of the tissue – is done by heat. The tissue is basically blown away. However, this creates a hole – there are no blood vessels or other supporting cells to regenerate the area. We want to use a much lower current, and we want to use it in a targeted way so that it only damages those nerve cells that are causing the problem. Also, we intend to use the hydrogen peroxide mentioned earlier.
What could this be a treatment for?
Epilepsy and chronic pain connected with peripheral nerves. We’re researching that intensively. I have to admit, we’re rather impatient. Even though we don’t have the conditions to experiment on animals, we do conduct some experiments in our laboratories. Our impatience brought us to leeches. We order them in bulk because they require no ethical approval and they’re cheap. Basically, they have no rights (laughs) and are a rewarding research model. We’re studying neural interfaces on them. And now we want to move on to locusts, which also have no rights. They have the same nerves as we do and it will be interesting to sense movement in them. Their skeletal musculature is identical to ours.
What are the results of testing on leeches?
Very promising. Thanks to the leeches, we’ve clearly confirmed that our Faraday scalpel works. We’re able to electrocute the nerve tissue in five minutes to stop signal transmission. Next month, we’ll be doing similar experiments on mice. Thanks to the tests on leeches, we already have some input parameters, so it should be that much easier and faster with rodents. I’m confident this will save both our time and their lives.
That leaves us with the last of your three lines of research. Which one is it?
It’s the furthest we’ve gone so far. It’s new clinical research that we’re applying to patients and volunteers. I’m talking about so-called interference stimulation. There are very few groups in the world that are doing what we are doing. We are one of the first groups to enter this pioneering field. And it’s taking off fast here. I dare say we’re the furthest ahead of everyone else in Europe at least. We’re collaborating with neurologists at St. Anne’s Hospital.
What is the principle of interference stimulation?
It follows the already common non-invasive electrical stimulation, so adhesive electrodes. They are used to stimulate nerves or muscles. However, since the current is passed through the skin, it is unfortunately only possible to target nerves that are close to the skin. If the target is deeper, like the brain, it no longer works. And interference solves this problem. We know that if we use, say, 4 or 6 or 8 electrodes and two frequencies that are different from each other instead of just one, even if only by 5 Hz – say 10,000 Hz and 10,005 Hz – then interference is created. The waves interact by amplifying and damping each other. These 5 Hz are the so-called stimulus frequency. The cells in the body respond to these low frequencies, as opposed to the high ones. If we stick a series of electrodes on the skin correctly, we can target any point in the body deep under the skin – like the centre of the brain.
This procedure has only been around for 7 years, how come it can already be used clinically?
Because we’re using an existing approved technology – stimulators that exist in clinics. We’re just using more electrodes and at high, unusual frequencies. From a technological point of view, it’s a small change, which is why it’s so easy to get approval. It allows us to move very quickly in our research.
What do you stimulate in patients in this way?
We have quite a lot of research that is of great commercial interest. For example, we’re trying to treat sleep apnoea, where the tongue goes down the throat and the patient suffocates for a few seconds. They wake up and the tongue sort of resets. It’s basically snoring, but it’s a really serious problem for many patients because they don’t get enough sleep at night. The sleep cycle is interrupted by the awakening, and the patient does not get the much-needed REM sleep. This is now usually addressed with a pressure mask. However, most patients eventually get rid of that.
And would they sleep better and more comfortably with electrodes on their skin?
All the patients said it’s definitely better than a mask. The way it works is that the electrodes are stuck under the chin where they periodically stimulate the sublingual nerves. When these are irritated, the tongue lifts up a little, so it can’t sink in. We’ve already tried it in a sleep lab on a group of 12 patients. And the results were astonishing.
What’s your explanation?
I can’t say, because we don’t know. It’s a known fact that peripheral nerve excitability differs between the sexes. Unfortunately, it’s an unexplored area. Someone could take it up. It sure has worked for me, I guess I’m more irritable (laughs). We had actually tried it on ourselves before we tried it on patients.
What’s the next step in the research?
We’re now producing 50 boxes of miniaturised stimulators for patients to take home. After all, the conditions in the sleep lab are unnatural. This phase will last a month and then we’ll evaluate the results.
Last time I spoke to you, you told me you were trying to remove the substances that cause headaches from wine. Does that look promising?
We are working on this in parallel, although this is a bit of a departure from the main medical focus of our research. It’s a process of electrochemical treatment of white wine. In the end, it’s more complicated than it first appeared. But I was just thinking that I should start working on it intensively, because it would be a very innovative procedure that has practical significance, especially here in South Moravia.
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