Petr Dvořák

Petr Dvořák was born in Brno in 1956. He is Professor Emeritus of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Masaryk University (MUNI). He was the head of the Institute of Biology of the Faculty of Medicine and from 2011 to 2019 he served as vice-rector for research. From 2014 to 2020, he was first a member and later the first vice-chairman of the Research, Development and Innovation Council. He also worked as the chairman of the Commission for the Evaluation of Research Organizations and the chairman of the Bioethics Commission of the Czech Republic.

In his scientific work, he dealt with the signaling of fibroblast growth factor 2 and its receptors in human pluripotent embryonic and induced stem cells. He studied in particular the mechanisms of so-called self-renewal, differentiation and genomic stability of stem cells and topics related to their possible use for drug development and modeling of human diseases. Its results have contributed to a general understanding of how stem cells regulate pluripotent status and / or differentiate.

Petr Dvořák has published articles that are internationally recognized as a significant contribution to understanding stem cell biology. He has published more than 70 articles in the last 20 years, which are frequently cited (April 2021> 5200 citations; eg Nature Biotechnology, New England Journal of Medicine, Stem Cells, Journal of Cell Biology, FEBS Letters, Leukemia). He has been involved, often as the main coordinator, in many major national and international projects, mostly focusing on medical stem cell applications and related legislative and ethical issues (eg the very successful project "Platforms for biomedical discovery with human ES cells - ESTOOLS", "European hESC registry ”,“ EuroStemCell ”,“ EU ERA Chair ”).