CEITEC Scientist, Marek Mráz, Gets Award from Minister of Education

24. Nov. 2011

A member of the Molecular Medicine research programme and doctoral student at Masaryk University, Marek Mráz, received an award from the Minister of Education for his excellent results in the area of leukaemia research. The award ceremony took place on 24 November 2011 in the Great Mirror Hall at the Ministry of Education.

MUDr. Mgr. Marek Mráz works in the Medical Genomics research group, which operates within the Central European Institute of Technology, CEITEC, at the Clinic of Internal Medicine – Hematology and Oncology at the University Hospital Brno, and he is also a student of the Oncology doctoral programme at the Faculty of Medicine of Masaryk University. For several years he has been dealing with the issue of leukaemia in his scientific work, he specializes mainly in chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, which is the most frequent type of leukaemia in adults. “This disease is characterized by an extremely variable clinical process with the median survival according to the sub-type of disease ranging from tens of months to tens of years. In the laboratory we deal with the study of molecularly biological routes responsible for different behaviours of the disease,“ Mráz said. He specifically devotes himself to researching the tasks of microRNA in the pathogenesis of this disease and the possibilities of their use as prognostic markers in clinical medicine.

Dr. Mráz studied General Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine at MU and Molecular Biology and Genetics at the Faculty of Science at MU. In 2010 he took a six-month sojourn at the American Mayo Clinic, where he dealt mainly with the mechanisms of resistance of cancer cells to therapy. A fundamental publication dealing with the resistance to a monoclonal antibody rituximab used in the therapy of B-cell malignancies dates back to the period of his stay. In the coming days the successful scientist is leaving for another long-term stay at a university in San Diego, where he will continue in his studies of the resistance of tumour diseases to therapy and the use of microRNA in clinical practice.

Dr. Mráz is the holder of several awards; in 2008 he received a prize for medicine from the hands of the Nobel Prize, J.-M. Lehn. His publication describing the tasks of microRNA with aggressive subtypes of leukaemia earned the prize of the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine for work producing a large benefit for science this year. The young scientist is also active as a member of the evaluating commission for the conference of the American Society of Hematology and as an opponent in several prestigious scientific journals.

The award for the students of Bachelor, Master or Doctoral study s is given by the Minister for extraordinary results in study and in activities of science, research, development, artistic or other creative activities. The history of the award goes back to 1999. The nominations for the award are given to the Minister by rectors of universities. Apart from an award certificate the award winners also receive a gift of 15,000 crowns.