During the difficult time of the pandemic, our employees are actively involved in research on COVID-19. Dr Jan Nowak in cooperation with prof. Jack Satsangi from the University of Oxford conducted research on expression of the ACE2 and TMPRSS2 genes in the intestine. ACE2 is a receptor for SARS-CoV-2 and the TMPRSS2 protein is needed in the virus maturation process. The data from the international IBD-Character project (FP7), allows to show greater expression of the ACE2 gene in the large intestine of active inflammatory bowel disease. It indicates a need for effective therapy in this group of patients especially during a pandemic.
The analysis report, has just appeared in the prestigious journal Gastroenterology (IF 20) link
Congratulations for our colleague - Dr Jan Nowak, who is the first coauthor of this paper!
His internship at Oxford was financed by the OPUS project from the National Science Center (2017/25/B/NZ5/02783), and the ongoing ProScience program for young scientists (PUMS).