STA, 28 June 2021 - Researchers of the biospeleology group of the Ljubljana Biotechnical Faculty have published in the Nature Communications journal an article which, according to the principal author Špela Borko, shows for the first time that "descendants of the ancient explosions of evolution may also be found in Europe, if you look in the right spot - underground".

In the article titled Subterranean adaptive radiation of amphipods in Europe, the researchers of the Department of Biology at the faculty reconstructed the course of evolution of 45 million-year-old subterranean amphipod genus.

The faculty said on its website, as it announced the article, that old groups of blind crustaceans from the genus Niphargus had dispersed from West Europe via interstitial and shallow subterranean water systems to South-Eastern Europe.

With the uplift of carbonate massifs in South-Eastern Europe from the Paratethys sea 15 million years ago, they took the opportunity to inhabit many newly-created subterranean habitats, from underground rivers and lakes to fissures just below the surface.

Today, hundreds of morphologically and ecologically diverse species live in groundwaters from Ireland to Iran, and the greatest diversity of the underground life is found precisely in South-Eastern Europe as there were several simultaneous explosions of evolution while people populated the newly-created karst of the present-day south-eastern Alps and the Dinaric Alps.

Although sudden evolutional events, when many ecologically very diverse species are created from the common ancestor in a very short time, are frequently connected with exotic places, such events were occurring in Europe several million years ago, when the continent was still similar to today's tropics.

"Fossil evidence shows the blossoming of species diversity in Europe at the time. Later geological and climate changes resulted in the extinction of a majority of groups and today the conviction is that Europe is a rather boring continent in terms of biodiversity," the website says.

However, as biospeleologists from the faculty believe, biodiversity in Europe should perhaps be sought underground. The head of the research Cene Fišer noted that "it [biodiversity] was especially lively precisely in the area of present-day Slovenia".

The article, available at here, is also signed by Peter Trontelj and Ajda Moškrič, who are also members of the biospeleology group, and Ole Seehausen of the University of Bern.

STA, 15 June 2021 - Three Slovenian promising young women researchers specialising in gynaecological oncology, genetic toxicology and natural resources economics have won the national L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science scholarships for 2021.

The EUR 5,000 awards were conferred to Monika Sobočan, Martina Štampar and Tanja Šumrada by L'Oreal Adria and the Slovenian National Commission for UNESCO in Ljubljana on Tuesday.

Hailing the winners Vanya Panayatova, general manager for Adria-Balkans at L'Oréal, said the Women in Science programme had in the past 15 years supported 43 exceptional researchers in Slovenia, who would join 3,600 women researchers in 117 countries.

Addressing the award ceremony by video link, Education Minister Simona Kustec said gender equality in science would be one of the priorities in science as Slovenia holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU in the second half of the year.

Gender equality would also be dealt with in a new bill on research and innovation that is to be put to parliament for discussion shortly.

The awards were conferred to the three researchers in recognition for their excellent research and vital contribution to the development of science and society's progress.

Monika Sobočan, 29, is working on a doctoral thesis at the Maribor Faculty of Medicine and the UKC Maribor medical centre studying biomarkers that could help recognise how aggressive ovarian cancer and how it responds to systemic therapy.

As part of her training at Royal London Hospital and Queen Mary University of London she is working on cancer prevention and preventive surgical procedures in women with genetic risks for gynaecological cancers.

Martina Štampar, 30, in January successfully defended her doctoral thesis where she studied and developed a new liver in-vitro 3D cell model to be used for testing genotoxic activity of xenobiotic substances.

Štampar now works as junior researcher at the genetic toxicology and cancer biology at the National Institute of Biology.

Tanja Šumrada, 29, studies the impact of farming on biodiversity and environmental protection within the Slovenian and EU agricultural policy as part of her post-graduate study.

Europe and the world have seen a sharp decline in biodiversity in recent decades, the main reasons being change in the manners of farming and use of soil, said Šumrada, who is part of a team of researchers at the Ljubljana Biotechnical Faculty who explore suitable development solutions for rural areas.

STA, 21 April 2021 - The National Institute of Biology (Nacionalni inštitut za biologijo - NIB) has licenced its gene therapy know-how and technology to a spin-off called Niba Labs, which will develop and commercialise technologies for the characterisation and quantification of therapeutic viruses used in gene therapy.

"The path leading to this moment has been long, for we have conducted a lot of basic research that has helped us to build up top-level know-how in virology and develop methods that will now be applied," NIB director Maja Ravnikar said on Wednesday.

Ravnikar said the new company, the NIB's second spin-off, would operate on the global market and collaborate with all Slovenian biotech firms in this segment.

The revenue from the licensing of the technology will be reinvested into research. The NIB and Niba Labs will continue collaborating on the research and commercialisation of the technologies.

According to Niba Labs' head of R&D, David Dobnik, the technology involves deploying viruses to act as delivery vehicles for replacement genes in the treatment of genetic conditions.

STA, 20 April 2021 - Supercomputer Vega was formally launched in Maribor on Tuesday, putting Slovenia on the global map of computer superpowers. It is the first in a series of eight planned high-performance computing (HPC) centres in the EU. 

Vega is a 6.9 petaflops supercomputer, which means it can do 6.9 million billion computing operations per second, and it cost EUR 17.2 million.

Currently the most powerful supercomputer in Slovenia has been set up as part of the national project to upgrade research infrastructure (HPC RIVR) and EuroHPC, a public-private partnership for European high-performance computing.

It is located at the Institute of Information Science (IZUM), whose director Aleš Bošnjak said there were currently only 13 countries in the world with more powerful supercomputers.

"Our supercomputing power is just behind that of the UK and before Russia's," University of Maribor Vice Dean Zoran Ren said at the online inauguration event. He believes it will enable Slovenian and European scientists outstanding discoveries.

European Commission Vice President in charge of digital transition Margrethe Vestager said the first supercomputer launched as part of EuroHPC was an excellent example of cooperation at various levels.

"Supercomputing will enable European small and medium-sized companies to enter the hi-tech economy of the future," she said in her address via video call.

She also pointed to the role European supercomputers could play in supporting artificial intelligence to produce new medicines and save lives.

Janša, who had the honour of turning on the computer by symbolically pressing a red button, also highlighted the role such machines have in addressing contemporary challenges, including Covid-19.

"Vega will enable scientists to discover new materials and components, help them model global phenomena, discover new medicines and medical therapies in the fight against cancer and other serious diseases.

"It will also help companies, mostly those developing the most state-of-the-art products, for instance in pharmacy, car industry or energy. With these and similar steps the EU is resolutely threading the path of strategic autonomy," he said.

Education and Science Minister Simona Kustec stressed top science, technology and advanced industry could develop only on the basis of top knowledge and infrastructure.

"The initiatives such as EuroHPC enable and encourage joint planning and investments in the European research area, thus further strengthening and connecting it."

Vega is named after 18th-century mathematician and physicist Jurij Vega.

It was co-funded by the EU from the European Regional Development Fund, the Ministry of Education and Science and EuroHPC.

The EU's other seven high-performance computing centres will be located in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal and Spain.

STA, 6 April 2021 - The Jožef Stefan Institute (IJS) has announced that it had articles by its researchers published in Nature and Science, two of the most prestigious international scientific journals, in a span of only two days, in what is considered a remarkable achievement for Slovenia.

In the last ten years, the country's prime scientific institute has seen its researchers publish in Nature and Science eleven times, or one a year on average.

This means that the publication of two articles in two days is an exceptional achievement, the IJS said in a press release on Tuesday after holding an online press conference.

In the Nature journal, Uroš Cvelbar and his colleagues from South Korea report about a surprising discovery that it is possible to stabilise instabilities in fluids by means of ionised gas jet or the use of plasma in a paper titled “Stabilization of liquid instabilities with ionized gas jets”.

According to the IJS, these findings could help improve many industrial processes that include gas jets, such as production of steel, reactive propulsion system, reactive pumps etc.

Meanwhile, Dušan Turk of the institute's Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Structural Biology Department and his international colleagues present in the Science journal a study that inspires hope in the fight against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

The article entitled "X-ray screening identifies active site and allosteric inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 main protease" focuses on development of drugs or active substances that could ease the symptoms or cure Covid-19 patients.

The IJS said that both articles had attracted a lot of international attention, with the one in Nature having been read by more than 1,300 researchers and being mentioned in blogs and on social media platforms.

The article in Science, available at here, is gaining even more traction as its subject is very topical and because it inspires the hope that a large step has been taken towards finding a cure for Covid-19, the research centre added.

In search of a drug against Covid-19, the consortium of 30 institutions led by Germany's DESY and the University of Hamburg performed a high-throughput X-ray crystallographic screen of two repurposing drug libraries against the SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro), which is essential for viral replication.

The screen tested already approved drugs and drugs in clinical trials and identified 37 compounds that bind to Mpro. In subsequent cell-based viral reduction assays, some compounds showed antiviral activity at non-toxic concentrations.

The scientists identified two allosteric binding sites representing attractive targets for drug development against SARS-CoV-2, with Turk saying today he expected the eleven substances the researchers highlighted to be embraced by medical or pharmaceutical experts to try to validate them in practice.

"If certain substances have already been validated and are in general use, they have been validated under certain conditions for a certain disease, while now it should be checked under what conditions they are also suitable for another disease and how effective they are."

STA, 20 January 2021 - An international team of researchers headed by Marko Anderluh of the Ljubljana Faculty of Pharmacy and Nikola Minovski of the Chemistry Institute has synthesized molecules that could result in new treatments for super resistant bacteria.

The expert group demonstrated the mechanism of action of these new molecules for the first time, the Faculty of Pharmacy said.

This breakthrough will help develop new, more effective medicines to tackle one of the key global problems of the 21st century - anti-microbial resistance, which is one of the ten most dire threats to public health, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The occurrence and spread of pathogens resistant to medicines jeopardise effective treatment of common infections.

"The main achievement of the researchers is the development of bacterial type II topoisomerase inhibitors (NBTI) with the innovative segment of the molecule. The produced molecules, which have been patented, have an extraordinary potent antibacterial effect since they are even more efficient in inhibiting the proliferation of bacterial cells."

The new molecules could boost the treatment of bacterial infections by affecting resistant bacterial strains that hardly respond to the existent antimicrobials.

The breakthrough has also proved the existence of special halogen bonds in biological macromolecules, which has not yet been identified in a biological system.

Four Slovenian scientists and six from the UK worked on the study, which took four years. Its findings were presented in a peer-reviewed paper in Nature Communications on 8 January (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20405-8).

STA, 2 December 2020 - This year's Zois Prizes for lifetime achievement in science and research have been bestowed on researcher Tamara Lah Turnšek of the National Institute of Biology and University of Ljubljana professor emeritus Radovan Stanislav Pejovnik. The recipients were presented in a documentary showed on TV Slovenija last evening.

Lah Turnšek has been striving for a comprehensive approach to scientific work. Her breakthrough discovery of a protease enzyme named cathepsin S early on in her career has been followed by biomedical studies focusing on inflammatory processes and cancer, the justification reads.

Currently, she is researching malignant brain tumours. Lah Turnšek has been working with Slovenian as well as foreign research or medical institutions and striving to promote science in the public.

She has also paved the way for women in her field and has been fighting for equality of opportunities.

Pejovnik is a researcher and professor who has left an indelible mark in sintering theory or liquid phase sintering, core technology for coming up with ceramic products, such as bricks or highly complex electrical engineering components.

Almost 30 years ago he gathered a group of young people around him to launch a pioneer study into lithium batteries. Slovenia is one of the leading countries in this field also due to his efforts, the justification reads.

This year's Puh Prize for lifetime achievement went to researcher Janez Trontelj, the doyen of Slovenian microelectronics studies and the head of a microelectronics lab at the Ljubljana Faculty of Electrical Engineering.

He has been running the designing of microelectronics circuits for more than 50 years and has contributed to a number of Slovenian companies making a name for themselves abroad.

An honour called Ambassador of Science of the Republic of Slovenia was also conferred. This year's recipient is Boštjan Kobe, professor of structural biology at the University of Queensland in Australia and a member of the Australian Academy of Science.

He has been researching the role of the proteins' spatial structures in the immune system response of animals and plants and is widely acclaimed in the international scientific community. Kobe has also been cooperating with researchers in Slovenia.

The documentary, which showcased this year's recipients, also featured President Borut Pahor, who stressed that these accolades were Slovenia's top honours in science, thanking the recipients for their efforts and accomplishments.

Pahor noted that Slovenian scientists were gaining prominence abroad and warned that it was key to attract them back home or at least maintain ties with them.

He pointed out that there was not enough research funding in Slovenia and urged a re-think on that since science, he believes, is key for our future.

STA, 15 September 2020 - The Ljubljana Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and the Guangdong University of Petrochemical Technology (GDUPT) have agreed to build an institute to research intelligent manufacturing methods of advanced materials in Guangdong Province, China.

According to the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, the Advanced Material Intelligent Manufacture Research Institute (AMIMRI) is to be set up by 2023 in a joint effort.

Last week, the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of Ljubljana and the Guangdong University of Petrochemical Technology signed an annex to the cooperation agreement they signed in 2018.

They committed to transferring existing knowledge between Slovenian and Chinese academic and industrial environments, building an experimental laboratory on the site of AMIMRI, the establishment of a doctoral study of mineral wool technologies, the establishment of joint Slovenian-Chinese research projects and the publication of the new institute's research results in scientific articles and patents.

According to the faculty, they also plan to research the mineral wool market in China and establish networks with new companies, which will be able to achieve a significant improvement in technology development in cooperation with the AMIMRI.

The Chinese partner has committed to provide EUR 300,000 for the work of Slovenian researchers over a period of three years, as well as EUR 250,000 for the material costs of building the institute.

The Faculty of Mechanical Engineering added that representatives of two manufacturers of mineral wool insulation products were also present at the virtual signing of the annex last Wednesday, and they expressed great interest in cooperation.

STA, 31 August 2020 - A team of researchers at the Ljubljana-based Chemistry Institute has developed a coronavirus vaccine that has produced a high immune response in mice. Tests have shown that the antibodies neutralise the virus just like with other vaccines and just like the antibodies in patients who have recovered from infection.

The team led by Roman Jerala, biochemist and synthetic biologist, has developed the vaccine based on the plasmid DNA that contains the code for the virus proteins and triggers the production of virus proteins in human cells. These respond by creating anti-bodies and the protective T cells, Jerala told the press today.

He said different coronavirus vaccines based on the plasmid DNA were already being tested in clinical reasearch in the US, Japan and South Korea.

The advantages of such vaccines are low costs of production and high stability, also outside freezers, while their downside is that they cannot enter cells as efficiently as viruses.

But Jerala's team has overcome this problem by modifying the virus's proteins into nano parts that are reminiscent of viruses, which improves the response of the immune system.

The team has prepared five varieties of the virus's receptor binding domain (RBD) that is in charge of recognising the cell's receptor.

Tests in mice have shown the best performing variety of the vaccine was the one where a short segment was added to the virus protein to trigger the production of large clusters.

In that case, the response was a hundred times better than that of the monomer protein used in some other vaccines.

The tests have shown that the anti-bodies neutralise the virus's attachment to the human receptor in concentrations that are comparable to other vaccines and the anti-bodies in patients that have recovered from an infection.

Moreover, T cells were produced, which destroy the cells producing virus proteins.

Jerala stressed though that these were only pre-clinical studies, and that the path to the actual use of the vaccine was still long. Comprehensive clinical studies would need to be conducted on humans before it could be used widely, he said, noting that developing the vaccine further would made no sense if another safe and efficient vaccine was made available soon.

Nevertheless, a consortium of researchers from the Veterinary Faculty, Faculty of Pharmacy, the infectious disease clinic of the UKC Ljubljana hospital and the Golnik clinic joined by the company Jafral will continue to work towards preparing the vaccine for clinical studies.

Borut Štrukelj from the Faculty of Pharmacy said this vaccine should definitely be developed further, especially as other vaccines being developed at the moment might not prove to be safe or effective in the long run.

Štrukelj also noted that the vaccine had been developed with ten or hundred times less funds than such projects receive in the US or China.

The article on the preclinical studies is currently available at is https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.28.244269v1. The team will also present its results to the European Medicines Agency.

If the agency responds quickly, clinical studies on humans could start in December, Štrukelj said.

Jerala estimates that enough vaccine for the entire Slovenia could be produced in an industrial fermenter in a week provided that the procedure is optimised.

STA, 20 May 2020 - The National Institute of Chemistry has started testing a potential coronavirus vaccine in a mouse study after receiving a green light for the animal trial on Tuesday. The nanoparticle-based vaccine contains viral antigens and could be more effective than a protein-based vaccine, Roman Jerala of the institute told the STA.

The first results of the study are expected in July when it will be clear whether the mice have responded to the vaccine by creating neutralising antibodies that prevent the coronavirus infection.

Jerala, a biochemist and synthetic biologist, is the head of the synthetic biology and immunology department at the institute where a new vaccine platform is currently tested. The project will enable a swifter, easier and cheaper way of preparing the vaccine.

The Food Safety, Veterinary Sector and Plant Protection Administration gave a go-ahead for the trial on Tuesday, almost two months after the institute submitted a request for the mouse study.

The testing commenced in a laboratory environment designed for in-vivo studies immediately after the green light was given.

Multiple constructs of protein nanoparticles and virus-like particles have been prepared to be analysed using cryo-electron microscopes.

"Given that findings about the virus and the [Covid-19] disease are developing extremely quickly, the institute prepared a somewhat amended type of vaccine during these two months, hoping to get a better cell immunity and more long-lasting protection," said Jerala.

He also announced that the institute would submit another request this week to complete trials on animals.

In each group the scientists will use six mice, constantly monitoring and testing various combinations. Altogether, the study will thus require tens of mice.

"The procedure will include the initial immunisation with booster doses in a few weeks and the analysis of serum and cell response," Jerala said.

The institute has recently developed a test for determining the prevention of the fusion of the virus and human cells, a way to test the vaccine efficacy as well as antibodies in persons who have recovered from Covid-19 or will have been vaccinated, according to Jerala.

The researchers will also focus on assessing whether the nanoparticle-based vaccine is more effective than a protein-based solution that is used as a basis for most coronavirus vaccine trials at the moment.

The project could deliver an innovative strategy to fight Covid-19 or potential types of diseases that might stem from similar viruses in the future.

If the animal studies prove effective, the institute will have to find partners who could conduct clinical trials.

The project is worth some EUR 500,000 with most researchers at Jerala's department working on it.