News

05/29/2024

11/27/2023

03/18/2023

02/16/2023

This special issue of Frontiers in Neuroscience features the diverse roles of cell adhesion molecules spanning from the well-known adhesion and mechanical stabilization to initiation of intracellular signaling cascades or acting as extracellular signaling molecules after cleavage.

Zsolt Lele together with his former PhD student, Zsófia László also authors a review in this special issue. They summarize recent advances in the field of N-cadherin research: “Flying under the radar: CDH2 (N-cadherin), an important hub molecule in neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases”.

02/11/2023

11/14/2022

11/07/2022

09/25/2022

Miki Zöldi and István Katona give a comprehensive review on the cutting-edge technique of STORM super-resolution microscopy used for imaging of CB₁ receptors in tissue preparations. The article has been published in the Endocannabinoid Signaling edition of the Methods in Molecular Biology book series.

09/20/2022

https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(22)01201-3

Graphical abstract of the paper:

Susanne completed her PhD studies at the János Szentágothai Neurosciences Doctoral School of the Semmelweis University.

04/01/2022

We are proud that Susanne’s presentation won the best Early Carrier Investigator lecture prize at the 6^th ERNEST meeting. She summarized her results on the PharmacoSTORM method for the nanoscale imaging of drug binding sites at this prestigious forum of the GPCR signal transduction research.

Marci is in his final year of medical studies at the Semmelweis University. He joined the Katonalab three years ago and his work under the supervision of Susanne Prokop has been a valuable contribution to the PharmacoSTORM project published recently in Nature Communications.

12/17/2021

With this prize the Institute of Experimental Medicine rewards each year three PhD students who published first author paper in prestigious journals during the year. Susanne received this recognition for her work published in Nature Communications introducing the novel PharmacoSTORM method and showing the cariprazine binding on D₃ dopamine receptors located on the axons of the Islands of Calleja granule cells.

10/15/2021

The study introduces PharmacoSTORM a novel method based on fluorescent small molecule pharmacoprobes (receptor ligands and enzyme inhibitors) and STORM super-resolution imaging. By using the logic of autoradiography and combining its quantitative strengths with the power of immunostaining for the visualization of cellular and subcellular profiles in intact brain circuits, PharmacoSTORM makes nanoscale pharmacological measurements possible in a cell-type- and subcellular compartment-specific manner. We demonstrated broad applicability of PharmacoSTORM for GPCRs, ion channels and enzymes.

Most importantly, PharmacoSTORM revealed that the major binding sites of cariprazine, a novel antipsychotic and antidepressant are the D₃ dopamine receptors located on the axons of the Islands of Calleja granule cells. The physiological role and the neuropsychiatric significance of the Islands of Calleja are not well understood. Therefore, our new study has important translational impact by postulating that a major mechanism of action of cariprazine treatment is the regulation of the dopaminergic control of the outputs of the Islands of Calleja granule cells via D₃ receptor binding.

The first author of the study is Susanne Prokop, an exceptional graduate student in our lab. Several other former and current lab members contributed to this work including Benjámin Barti, Márton Vámosi, Miklós Zöldi, László Barna, Gabriella Urbán and Barna Dudok. We are very grateful for the valuable contribution of our wonderful collaborators at the Keserű lab, at the van der Stelt lab, at the Hunyady lab and Gian Marco Leggio.

The @Katonalab presented three major unpublished projects. István introduced PharmacoSTORM, our new approach to perform cell-type-specific nanoscale pharmacology in complex brain circuits. Benjámin Barti presented our on-going research on tonic cannabinoid signaling and Miklós Zöldi shared his new methodology for nanoscale imaging of astrocytes.

As icing on the cake, the best poster prizes of the Cannabinoid GRC was received by Benjámin Barti, and by Barna Dudok, former graduate student of the @Katonalab, who is now a postdoc at Stanford University. Congrats!

04/12/2021

Vivi started working in the Katona lab as a graduate student and her excellent work has led to first author publications in Nature Neuroscience and Cerebral Cortex, as well as to co-author papers in Nature Communications and Nature Protocols. Vivi, we wish you a lot of similar success in your future carrier!

In this NIH funded collaboration with the labs of Prof. Charles L. Limoli (Department of Radiation Oncology, University of California, Irvine) and Prof. Ivan Soltesz (Department of Neurosurgery and Department of Neurology & Neurological Sciences, Stanford University)  we examined the deleterious effect of mixed-ion Galactic cosmic radiation (GCR) on the central nervous system. Compared to single-ion irradiation, the mixed-ion irradiation containing combinations of protons, helium, oxygen, silicon and iron ions gives a more accurate simulation of the space environment that would affect astronauts during spaceflights. Electrophysiological recordings showed that mixed-ion GCR preferentially enhances inhibitory synaptic signaling in hippocampal networks and disrupts cognition and elicits anxiety-like behavior.

Our young colleagues, Petra Aradi, Diana Dimen, Benjamin Barti and Miklos Zoldi are excited to start their work at Istvan Katona’s new „Addiction and Neuroplasticity laboratory” at the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University.

The Junior Prima Prize in Science was founded in 2007 by the Hungarian Development Bank. It is awarded every year to ten young scientists for their outstanding scientific achievement.

We are really proud and happy that Zsofi’s pivotal work on uncovering the protective role of the endocannabinoid enzyme ABHD4 during brain development has been recognised by this prestigious prize.

The paper titled ‘NECAB1 and NECAB2 are Prevalent Calcium-Binding Proteins of CB1/CCK-Positive GABAergic Interneurons’ has been published with Vivien Miczán as the first author. With the help of in silico database screening and sophisticated experimental and imaging methods we successfully showed NECAB1 and NECAB2 at the mRNA and protein levels to be characteristic calcium-binding proteins of CB1+ interneurons in the hippocampus, basolateral amygdala, and somatosensory cortex. Furthermore, we discovered a differential subcellular distribution of the NECABs in the somatodendritic and boutonal compartments of the interneurons indicating a functional division of labor between the two calcium-binding proteins.

For further reading please see the homepage of Cerebral Cortex:
https://academic.oup.com/cercor/advancearticle/doi/10.1093/cercor/bhaa326/5998789

Zsófi started working in the Katona lab as a graduate student and now after long years of hard work and successfull research she defended her PhD thesis. The timing of her defense was more than ideal: right after publishing her results in Nature Communications and just before her leaving for a postdoc position in Dr. Christopher Henstridge’s group at the University of Dundee School of Medicine.

Dear Zsófi, we wish you a lot of success for the forthcoming years! You have been the engine and heart of the lab and we will definitely miss you a lot!

08/31/2020

During a difficult, but very rewarding scientific journey, Zsófia László and Zsolt Lele, the main authors of the paper, discovered a new safeguarding mechanism that we termed developmental anoikis. This process is conceptually analogous to anoikis, a detachment-induced form of apoptosis that is the central protective mechanism against pathological forms of epithelial-mesenchymal transition.

By using an arsenal of state-of-the-art methods such as in utero electroporation and correlated confocal and super-resolution imaging, and with the help of other lab members such as Miklós Zöldi, Vivien Miczán and Fruzsina Mógor, they succeded in identifying the serine hydrolase abhydrolase domain containing 4 (ABHD4) as an essential molecular player in this protective mechanism.

ABHD4 is expressed in radial glia progenitor cells and triggers apoptosis upon abnormal delamination of these cells thereby preventing pathological developmental processes. Importantly, the rapid downregulation of ABHD4 was observed following neuronal cell fate commitment under normal conditions indicating that the delaminated daughter neuroblasts escape from anoikis by silencing ABHD4-mediated developmental anoikis.

Maternal alcohol exposure often results in microcephaly due to the loss of radial glia progenitor cells. To test the relevance of ABHD4 in cell death induced by teratogenic insults, Zsófi and Zsolt also demonstrated the clinical importance of ABHD4-induced cell death in two mouse models of fetal alcohol syndrome.

For further reading please see the homepage of Nature Communications: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18175-4

To resonate with the growing legalization and use of cannabis, Cambridge University Press has published a concise textbook for health care practitioners, educators and the general public about the medical and adverse effects of cannabis. The book is written by Timmen L. Cermak, an American psychiatrist and Past-President of the California Society of Addiction Medicine.

He introduces the basic neurobiological effects of cannabis and the operational principles of the endogenous cannabinoid signaling system in the first chapter in a historical context called „Monumental Marijuana Discoveries”. Starting from the ground-breaking isolation of THC by Raphael Mechoulam in 1964 via the discovery of the cannabinoid receptors and their endocannabinoid messengers in the 90’s, the chapter ends with elucidation of synaptic endocannabinoid signaling. We are proud that the doctoral and postdoctoral findings of our PI achieved in the lab of Tamas Freund in Budapest are introduced in details and were selected as one of the key discoveries in cannabinoid research.

We advise to order the book for further reading, but Chapter 1 is freely available here:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/51E394ECD69117D2332D5A22FCC1C046/9781108735735c1_1-13.pdf/monumental_marijuana_discoveries.pdf

Ana Bernal-Chico worked with us with a postdoctoral fellowship and just returned to her home Basque Country. An interesting study partly arising from her studies in Budapest and titled: ’P2x7 receptors control demyelination and inflammation in the cuprizone model’ has been published in Brain, Behavior, & Immunity Health. The lead author is Prof. Susana Mato in the Achucarro Basque Center for Neuroscience. The study shows that P2x7 receptors are required for the onset of demyelination and T cell-independent inflammation, but not for the subsequent myelin repair process.

For further reading see:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666354620300272

In an outstanding article in Neuron, David Marcus and his colleagues from the Sachin Patel lab identified a crucial mechanism of stress resilience that involves the retrograde action of 2-AG endocannabinoid molecule at a specific synaptic connection between BLA pyramidal neurons and the supragranular pyramidal neurons in the prelimbic prefrontal cortex (plPFC). With the aid of in vivo imaging techniques and cell-type-specific genetic manipulations they show that breakdown of this retrograde endocannabinoid signaling is the essential switch for the development of stress-induced anxiety-like behavior in mice.

Our PI had the privilege to provide a context for this work in a Preview Article for the readers of Neuron. By using the famous Michael Douglas movie ’Falling down’ as an example, the preview article also aims to highlight how important it is to better understand the mechanisms of stress resilience together with the underlying neurobiological processes that make some individuals more vulnerable to stressful conditions leading to mental illnesses and breakdown.

For further reading see: https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(20)30149-5

Our new paper titled ’N-cadherin (Cdh2) Maintains Migration and Postmitotic Survival of Cortical Interneuron Precursors in a Cell-Type-Specific Manner’ has just been published in Cerebral Cortex with Zsófia László as first author and Zsolt Lele as corresponding author. In this study, we describe the important role of N-cadherin, a cell adhesion protein in the migration and survival of cortical interneurons during the postmitotic stage of development. The results show that the effect of N-cadherin is cell-type-specific. Therefore, the removal of N-cadherin from the postmitotic neuroblasts leads to a change in the interneuron profile of the adult cortex due to the decrease in the number of GAD65-positive inhibitory interneurons. Well done Zsófi and Zsolt!

For further reading see: https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/30/3/1318/5538384

We are proud to report that our PI received the honor of becoming a Naus Family Endowed Chair in Addiction Sciences in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the Indiana University. Therefore, part of our team will soon join to an outstanding research community, a leading center for cannabinoid research in North America that is located in the wonderful college town of Bloomington. István’s new lab will be next to the laboratories of two Cannabinoid GRC chairs Ken Mackie and Andrea Hohmann, to the Past President of the International Cannabinoid Research Society Heather Bradshaw and other famous cannabinoid researchers such as Hui-Chen Lu and Alex Straiker. Besides strengthening our on-going collaborations in cannabinoid research, a major driving force for our team is to extend our methodical and conceptual expertise in human cognitive neuroscience. Because the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences is ranked as a Top10 research location in cognitive psychology in the US, we will have a unique opportunity to learn from the best colleagues and combine our existing expertise in state-of-the-art nanoscale molecular, anatomical and electrophysiological techniques with novel mesoscale functional brain imaging and behavioral models. The newly formed „Addiction and Neuroplasticity laboratory” will primarily focus its research on substance use disorder-related pathological plasticity processes in both mice and humans.

If you are interested in joining our Bloomington team please contact István: ikatona@iu.edu

For further details see also: https://psych.indiana.edu/directory/faculty/katona-istvan.html

As a result of a successful collaboration with Ádam Dénes and his lab at the Institute of Experimental Medicine, we are glad to report that our contribution appeared in the prestigious journal Science. This study elucidates a novel form of microglia-neuron communication that is essential for the monitoring and protecting neuronal functions by the microglia. The results identified a novel morpho-functional interaction site between the two cell types. Its formation is induced rapidly and requires the function of microglial purinoceptor P2Y12. The key lab members in this project from our team were Zsófia László and Zsolt Lele.

For further reading see: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6477/528.long

We are proud that Vivien Miczán, a graduate student in our team is shared first-author of the paper. Most importantly, as an expert of maternal projects, Vivi just became the mother of a beautiful boy! Congratulations to Vivi and we wish you and your family all the best in your family life too!

The experimental findings of the new paper demonstrate that maternal THC exposure causes substantial molecular, cellular and synaptic changes in dopaminergic neurons of the ventral tegmental area in male offspring. The altered dopaminergic circuitry may represent a classic example of an endophenotype, because the preadolescent offspring seem to be normal at first look, but responds with abnormally elevated dopamine levels and aberrant behavioral patterns to THC exposure later in life. Importantly, the neurosteroid pregnenolone could rescue several aspects of the maladaptive alterations caused by maternal THC. These findings may contribute to a better understanding of the results of longitudinal clinical studies reporting that children of heavy cannabis-smoker mothers are at higher risk to develop neuropsychatric disorders. Because of the neurodevelopmental vulnerability, these results also argue against the current bad practice of proposing cannabis to pregnant women to alleviate morning sickness.

This study emerged from our long-standing collaboration (supported by our joint NIDA grant) with the team of Miriam Melis from the University of Cagliari, Italy who led the consortium and the team of Joe Cheer from the University of Maryland, USA. We are also very grateful for Dr. Csaba Pongor from the Nikon Imaging Center at our institute for his help as a co-author in this project.

05/2019

It is a real honour that our PI is organising this year’s GRC Cannabinoid Function in the CNS together with Prof. Zsolt Lenkei from INSERM, Paris. This conference is one of the most prestigious scientific events in the cannabinoid research field.

This year’s scientific program is really exciting with a highly prestigious speaker line-up (please, refer to the attached flyer).

The conference will take place at the Rey Don Jaime Grand Hotel in Castelldefels, Spain on the 21–26^th July, 2019. For the detailed program and registration, please, check out the conference webpage here.

We proudly congratulate Judit Glavinics from Pázmány University for winning the I. Prize at the Neurobiology Session of the 34^th OTDK competition! She gave an excellent presentation of her work entitled “Correlated twophoton and superresolution microscopy”.

Congratulations to Krisztina Kelemen on winning II. Prize at the Physiology, Pathology Session of the 34^th OTDK competition! Krisztina worked in our lab with Erasmus fellowships from the University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Târgu Mureș (Marosvásárhelyi Orvosi és Gyógyszerészeti Egyetem). The title of her presentation was: Examination of the calcium binding proteins of the CB1 cannabinoid receptor positive hippocampal interneurons.

Special merit goes to Vivien Miczán who has supervised the work of both students, so this success is also a proof of her outstanding mentoring skills.

Ana has spent more than 3 years with us and now she is continuing her carreer in the laboratory of Prof. Susana Mato with a postdoctoral fellowship sponsored by the Basque Country at the Achucarro Basque Center for Neuroscience.

We wish her exciting new discoveries and lot of success! Everyone from the lab will definitely miss her a lot!

We are proudly congratulating our colleague, László on winning the Dennis Gabor Prize. This prestigious prize was founded in 1989 in honour of Dennis Gabor, inventor of holography. The prize is awarded every year to those Hungarian scientists who performed exemplary innovative scientific activity.

László received the prize in recognition of his work in introducing the STORM super-resolution microscopy imaging to neuroscience research in Hungary and setting up and managing successfully the Nikon-KOKI Imaging Center with widely recognized activity in research and technical development.

A scientific symposium “New approaches and applications of STORM super-resolution imaging in life sciences” organized by the PI of our lab, István Katona, was held at the Institute of Experimental Medicine

30/11/2018

The scientific conference aimed to bring together experts of Single Molecule Localization Microscopy in Hungary to discuss potential applications of the technologies PALM and STORM in neuroscience as well as in biophysics and biochemistry research. The speech of Prof. Tamás Freund, Director of the Institute of Experimental Medicine opened the conference. The scientific program included lectures by Prof. Klaudia Barabás (Center for Neuroscience, University of Pécs), Prof. Tibor Pankotai (Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Szeged), Prof. György Vámosi (Department of Biophysics and Cell Biology, University of Debrecen). On the part of the Institute of Experimental Medicine young researchers, Dr. Balázs Pósfai (Laboratory of Neuroimmunology) and Dr. Susanne Prokop (Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology) introduced the latest results and developments in using super-resolution microscopy to study dynamic cellular actions and in developing the new innovative PharmacoSTORM method to label proteins with fluorescently tagged ligands for STORM imaging.

The occasion for the conference was that Nikon’s latest Super Resolution System N-STORM 5.0 has been recently installed in the Nikon-KOKI Imaging Center of the Institute of Experimental Medicine. For this reason, we were honoured to receive special guests from Nikon Corporation and Nikon Instruments Europe. In his opening speech, Mr Takaharu Sasaoka, President of Nikon Instruments Europe B.V., acknowledged the long-standing successful collaboration between Nikon and the Institute of Experimental Medicine in research development. Dr. Kenta Imai, engineer from the Nikon Corporation, presented new features and future directions of development in super-resolution imaging and its applications. Dr. László Barna, Head of the Nikon-KOKI Imaging Center summarized experiences on managing the microscopy core facility that serves a large research community. The conference was closed by the ceremony of ribbon-cutting and a reception.

Our PI, István Katona was an invited speaker at the Symposium: „New observations in Neuroscience using superresolution microscopy” together with Michihiro Igarashi and Ed Boyden. He presented the combined patch-clamp and STORM imaging technique developed in our lab that enables the correlation of physiological, morphological and molecular parameters of the examined synapses of identified cell types. Four young students of the lab presented posters of their on-going projects followed by great interest of the participants of the meeting.

The scientific program of the retreat was again really versatile with 14 exciting scientific lectures covering all the current projects of the team. The traditional „Hyper-active Prize” for the most active participant in the discussions was awarded to Anita Bernal for her useful comments. The „Hyper-attractive Prize” for the best quality presentation was awarded to Beni Barti.

The paper provides evidence that supraspinal CB1 cannabinoid receptors are essential for the analgesic effect of acetaminophen (aka paracetamol) against inflammatory pain. The use of various cell-type-specific CB1 deficient mouse lines and viral approaches together with microscopical investigations helped to unravel that especially those CB1 receptors, which are located in the rostral ventromedial medulla in the brainstem are among the most important molecular players in acetaminophen analgesia.

The full version of the article can be found here: http://www.jneurosci.org/content/38/2/322

Kata did her PhD studies at the Semmelweis University Molecular Medicine Doctoral School under the supervision of Prof. Emília Madarász. The title of her doctoral thesis is: Tissue- and cell-type specific compartmentalization of surface-modified fluorescent nanoparticles: „Enhanced detection with spectral imaging fluorescence microscopy.”

14^th MNB Lab retreat 2017

6-8/04/2017

This year’s lab retreat took us to the Börzsöny Hills where we hiked to the peak of Csóványos. The weather wasn’t in favour of our program, but we were tough enough to resist the fog and the wind. After the exhausting hiking we had a delicious stew prepared by the world famous chef, Barna Dudok. We also listened to some exciting project reports in the evening before the party session.

Our congratulations to Barna on his 100% successful PhD defense! The title of his doctoral thesis: “Cell type-specific molecular anatomy of the endocannabinoid system at cortical synapses”. Reviewers of the PhD dissertation were Prof. Zoltán Kisvárday from the University of Debrecen, Faculty of Medicine and dr. Judit Lazáry from the Semmelweis University. Barna did his PhD studies at the Semmelweis University János Szentágothai Doctoral School of Neurosciences and his supervisor was István Katona.

Barna started working in the Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology 12 years ago as a high school student. Now, as an expert in super-resolution microscopy, he will continue his carreer at Stanford University. We wish him successful postdoc years and exciting new discoveries!

We are pleased to welcome dr. Claudia Sagheddu from the University of Cagliari who is visiting our lab with a Short Term EMBO fellowship. She will stay for 3 months and will learn STORM super-resolution microscopy.

 A new collaborative paper involving our lab shows an unexpected dissociation between changes in the magnitude of tonic cannabinoid signaling and the number of cannabinoid receptors in a mouse model of “astronaut brain”.

01/12/2016

Particle radiation causes profound changes in brain physiology, which can lead to depression and declined mental performance in humans, for example after radiotherapy. However, very little is known about the neurobiological basis of these phenomena. In collaboration with the groups of Sanghun Lee, Ivan Soltesz, Charles Limoli and Daniele Piomelli, we studied how radiation affects synaptic communication in the hippocampus. Interestingly, we found that inhibitory synaptic currents are greatly increased after irradiation due to reduced tonic endocannabinoid control of GABA release. While the weaker tonic endocannabinoid signal was accompanied by decreased 2-AG endocannabinoid levels, the presynaptic CB₁ cannabinoid receptor density remained unchanged as we revealed by using STORM super-resolution imaging. See the full open access version here:

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00429-016-1345-3

See attached image and the full version.

Some further details:

It is well established that postsynaptic protein synthesis is critical for the consolidation of long-term synaptic plasticity. However, whether presynaptic local protein translation is involved remained highly debated within the field. In this study, Tommy Younts and Hannah Monday from the Castillo group have done meticulous paired patch-clamp recordings to show that a form of endocannabinoid-dependent long-term depression of inhibitory synapses in the hippocampal CA1 region requires protein synthesis, and can be blocked by the application of translation inhibitors in the presynaptic, but not in the postsynaptic cell. Their experiments also suggested that the site of translation is likely to be in distal axons, and not in the cell body.

The presence of ribosomes in mature mammalian axon terminals has been a subject of controversy for decades. STORM super-resolution imaging available in our institute at the Nikon Center of Excellence for Neuronal Imaging offers unprecedented sensitivity in detecting immunofluorescence signal owing to the single-molecule sensitivity of the method. Barna Dudok in our lab has used STORM to demonstrate the presence of presynaptic ribosomes in hippocampal GABAergic axon terminals. Together, these results indicate that precisely regulated local protein synthesis allows the long-lasting modification of the molecular machinery for presynaptic neurotransmitter release at CB₁-expressing inhibitory synapses. These findings also raise several exciting questions to be explored. Is presynaptic translation important for other forms of synaptic plasticity and does it play a role at other types of synapses?  Furthermore, which mRNAs are specifically translated in axon terminals? To be continued…

After four years of successfull postdoc work in the Katona lab, Steve Woodhams is now continuing his carreer in the laboratory of Professor Victoria Chapman at the University of Nottingham. His work in the Katona lab focused on identifying the cell type specific distribution of the endocannabinoid signalling system’s components in the spinal cord. He also participated in several other projects of the group and got familiar with the STORM superresolution microscopy technique.

We will all certainly miss him a lot, not only his scientific expertise and helpful advices but also his cheerful and friendly personality and brilliant sense of humour.

We all had a great time at this late summer BBQ party in the garden of the institute. As a farewell present, we surprised Steve with an old Hungarian game: the Button Soccer. The game has been redesigned to feature all the lab members as players of the two soccer teams.

To teach Steve how to play it – and to have fun – we held the first MNB Lab Button Soccer Championship. Istvan took the role of referee, as he would have had an unfair advantage in the chamionship having played this game A LOT in his childhood. Steve did a really good job in learning the game, as he ended up being the first Button Soccer Champion of the MNB lab. Congratulations, Steve!

Ágnes is a talented 11^th grade student from the Ferences Gimnázium in Szentendre, who won the second prize at the Ramon y Cajal competition founded by Peter Somogyi from the University of Oxford, Department of Pharmacology. Her reward was to spend a month as a student-researcher in a laboratory at the Institute of Experimental Medicine.

Ágnes was very enthusiastic and got acquainted with a lot of techniques used in our lab. We wish her good luck with her studies!

This year our annual lab retreat was held in the town of Tokaj, famous for its wine specialty, the aszú. We had the honour to welcome several special guests: Prof. Miriam Melis from the University of Cagliari and Prof. Ivan Soltesz from the Stanford University joined us for the retreat, provided insightful comments on our progress reports and gave fascinating lectures on their views on how we could become better scientists. We were also pleased that Vincent Paget-Blanc from Raffaella Tonini’s group at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Genova – who works with us in collaboration on a specific short project – could also come to the trip and presented his research. Another special guest was Susanne Prokop from the Hunyady lab at the Semmelweis Medical University, who presented her recent work on GPCR dimers.

During the lab retreat, we listened to 13 exciting scientific lectures presented by our lab members and by our guests. The traditional „Hyper-active Prize” was shared by all lab members due to their very impressive activity with questions and useful comments after the lectures. The „Hyper-attractive Prize” for the best presentation was awarded to Steve Woodhams for highlighting the similarities between the history of endocannabinoid research and Hungarian football (and also for his beautiful microscopy images).

The social program was again colorful as usual: we tasted oustanding wine in the medieval Rákóczi Cellar, in the same chamber where a former Hungarian king was elected; we had a 12 km strenous hike in the beautiful beech forests of the Zemplén Hills near Háromhuta finding several rare plants such as wild Gladiolus and protected animals such as the yellow-bellied toad along the path. On the last day, we had a fantastic canoe trip on the river Bodrog in the strictly protected dense riparian forest and had a very exhausting (especially for those youngsters, who danced until 6 am on the previous night!) crossing across the largest swamps in Hungary with the help of a local biologist. Those who survived the canoe will never forget seeing the white-tailed eagles and the black storks and the refreshing swimming in the Bodrog river appropriately closing the 13th MNB Lab Retreat.

If you are interested, you can find more photos about the retreat in the Lablife section.

07/06/2016

We were delighted to learn today that István Katona is one of the 58 life science researchers elected as new EMBO Members in 2016. The European Molecular Biology Organization announced the list of new members who are “elected annually in recognition of research excellence and outstanding achievements made in the field of life sciences to ensure that the membership remains at the forefront of life science research”.

Congratulations to István and please keep us busy/entertained/motivated with your never-ending suggestions for new scientific challenges.

Some further information in English

További információk magyarul

30/01/2016

27/06/2013