Jan Pencik, PhD student at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Cancer Research and the Clinical Institute of Pathology of the Medical University of Vienna is awarded the donated by Novartis Czech Discovery Award
The award is bestowed by a ten-member scientific jury to distinguished high-profile Czech researchers below 40 with outstanding contributions in the medical or pharmaceutical field, in particular innovative clinical, diagnostic and preventive approaches in oncology.
Jan Pencik received the prize for his research into the previously unknown connection between the Jak / STAT and the ARF-p53 tumor suppressor pathway MDM2. His current work has revealed the essential role of IL-6 / STAT3 and ARF in the regulation of senescence in the genesis and metastasis in prostate cancer. The analysis of patient samples showed that STAT3 and ARF can be useful prognostic markers for high-risk patients for Prostate Cancer. This study published in Nature Communications and selected as an important research highlight of Nature Reviews Urology. The study was conducted in the LBI-CR by the research team led by pathologist Lukas Kenner, vide-director of the Institute and Professor for Laboratory Animal Pathology at the Medical University of Vienna and University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna. The research now awarded was in part financially supported by the stand alone project P 26011 of the Austrian Science FUnd (FWF) "Genetic Analysis of the IL-6 Signalling pathway in prostate oncogenesis".
About Pencik
January Pencik studied in Olomouc and Brno (Czech Republic) Biochemistry from 2005 to 2009. He spent a few months as visiting researcher at the University of Stuttgart (Germany), before he began his PhD at the LBI-CR in 2010. Since, he has studied a mouse model for Prostate cancer inactivating IL-6 / STAT3 and / or PTEN. Jan Pencik is the recipient of several national and international awards and will conclude his PhD thesis in the fall of 2015.