3P Medicine Laboratory, Medical University of Gdańsk

22/12/2025

🎆 As the year comes to an end, it naturally invites reflection on the past twelve months. In science, summaries often revolve around numbers: papers, grants, patents, titles, but this time we choose a different perspective.

🕯️ Looking back at 2025, we want to appreciate the other achievements: daily dedication, the small steps forward, the skills learned along the way, and the personal growth that shaped us both as scientists and as people. We value the obstacles that were overcome, and even those that felt overwhelming, but at the end strengthened us, both individually and as a team.

🌟 Thank you for being part of our journey this year!

👥We are grateful to our collaborators, and the wider community who followed our work, shared feedback, and supported us throughout the year!

🎄 We wish you and your loved ones a Christmas filled with joy, love, and laughter.

📷Julia Zakaszewska

16/12/2025

💡Lecture Day is an annual event at the Medical University of Gdańsk, commemorating Prof. Michał Reicher's final lecture at Vilnius University on December 15, 1939. After World War II, Prof. Reicher became one of the founders of our university and the first head of the Anatomy Department. On this day, the Rector of the Medical University of Gdańsk presents and give annual awards to outstanding university employees honoring their dedication and contributions to the academic community.

📣Yesterday, in the Auditorium Primum named after Professor Olgierd Narkiewicz at the Atheneum Gedanense Novum the scientists from IRA3P were honored with multiple Rector’s Awards:

🏅 1st Degree – Individual Award
“Epigenetic control of cellular plasticity and adaptive mechanisms in cancer and the nervous system”
Based on a series of 4 articles published in 2023–2024 (total IF = 45.9)
👤 Jakub Mieczkowski

🏅 1st Degree – Team Award
“The application of modern omics methods in the identification of cancer biomarkers and cancer-predisposition syndromes”
Based on a series of 9 articles published in 2023–2024 (total IF = 38.8)
👥 Arkadiusz Piotrowski, Jan Dumanski, Natalia Filipowicz, Jakub Mieczkowski, Magdalena Koczkowska, Edyta Rychglicka-Buniowska, Ulana Juhas, Kinga Drężek-Chyła, Katarzyna Duzowska, Monika Horbacz, Urszula Ławrynowicz
🤝 with Michał Bieńkowski (Department of Pathology)

🏅 1st Degree – Team Award
“Study on chromatin architecture as an integrator of cellular responses to environmental factors in outer space, from the level of nucleosomes to omics strategies”
Based on a series of 4 articles published in 2023–2024 (total IF = 78.6)
👥 Jakub Mieczkowski, Adrian Kacperczyk-Perdyan, Monika Horbacz

🏅 1st Degree – Team Award
“Research on new biomaterials and peptides for applications in regenerative medicine”
Based on a series of 5 articles published in 2024 (total IF = 35.1)
👥 Arkadiusz Piotrowski, Natalia Filipowicz
🤝 Led by the Department of Embryology: Michał Pikuła, Mirosława Cichorek and co-workers

🏅 2nd Degree – Team Award
European patent: “PoliRGD peptides obtained by chemical and biotechnological methods with injury-reducing and/or neuroprotective effects and a kit for their activity”
👤 Arkadiusz Piotrowski
🤝 Led by the Department of Embryology: Michał Pikuła

🎉 Congratulations to all awardees and collaborators, and thank you for your outstanding scientific achievements, collaborations, and the teamwork that made these successes possible!

➡To see to relation from Lecture Day visit: https://tinyurl.com/4su9p3vk

Photo: Paweł Sudara

11/12/2025

📣We are happy to share that the new article “Loss of Y chromosome in Alzheimer’s patients co-occurs with somatic mutations beyond CHIP drivers” by Edyta Rychlicka-Buniowska, Jan Dumanski and Natalia Filipowicz has freshly been published in Life Science Alliance (IF=2.9).

🧬 This new results sheds light on how Loss of Y Chromosome (LOY) and clonal hematopoiesis (CHIP) interact in ageing men with Alzheimer’s disease. Using whole-exome sequencing of sorted immune cell populations, the authors identified both known and previously unknown driver variants, many of which co-occurred with LOY. Notably, LOY strongly correlated with total driver burden in myeloid cells, suggesting it may act as a key early driver of clonal expansion in AD, while most classical CHIP mutations are likely to develop independently.

➡You can read full article at: https://tinyurl.com/y96nvsr9

01/12/2025

📣We are happy to share that Agnieszka Misztak and Jakub Mieczkowski are the co-authors of the paper “Development of a highly differentiated rat brain organoid model for exploring glioblastoma invasion dynamics and therapy” that has recently appeared in Neuro Oncology (IF=13.4).

🧠The paper is the result of the cooperation with the group of Professor Rolf Bjerkvig from University of Bergen (Norway) and Qilu Hospital of Shandong University and Brain Science Research Institute. The authors show that rat brain organoids (rBOs) can rapidly mature into fully differentiated brain-like structures, making them a powerful model for exploring how glioblastoma interacts with the brain microenvironment. The rBOs serve as an effective target brain structure for studying GB invasion parameters and for evaluating therapeutic interventions.

➡You can read full article at: https://tinyurl.com/yc7h33ec

27/11/2025

🤝Meet Julia Zakaszewska – our new PhD candidate in IRA3P! She joined the team in November 2025 as part of the First Team project “Diagnosis of High-Grade Brain Tumors Using Liquid Biopsy and Machine Learning,” led by Jakub Mieczkowski, PhD and funded by the Fundacja na rzecz Nauki Polskiej.

💡Julia graduated this year from mathematics at Technical University of Gda Gdańsk completing a thesis “Solving a first-order nonlinear differential equations system in the Lotka-Volterra model using artificial neural networks”. Beyond her thesis, Julia also took part in an ambitious interdisciplinary project “Feature extraction from medical records to increase the accuracy of intracranial aneurysm rupture likelihood.” This work is a powerful example of applying advanced mathematics and modern language models to real clinical problems, bridging the worlds of clinicians and data scientists to support better medical decision-making.

📊 In the First Team project, Julia will analyze biological data and develop statistical and machine-learning classification models to detect the presence of tumor-derived DNA in patients with brain tumors. These models will be built using epigenetic and fragmentomic features extracted from urine and blood samples collected from patients with gliomas.

🤝Julia – welcome on board!

21/11/2025

🎙️Another podcast featuring an IRA3P team member!

🚀 Listen to the Radio TOK FM episode by Cezary Łasiczka, where Kuba Mieczkowski talks about cosmic radiation, research during space missions, and the future of space medicine!

➡More: https://tinyurl.com/55ub7xm3

19/11/2025

🎙️ We invite you to listen to another podcast created by one of our team members - Magdalena Koczkowska. Magda is a specialist in laboratory medical genetics and an expert in the molecular diagnostics of neurofibromatosis and schwannomatosis.

❓ In the 4th episode of “NF-olog Academy”, she talks with Agnieszka Jatczak-Gaca, a specialist in pediatric oncology and hematology, about the genetics of Neurofibromatosis Type 1 (NF1). They discuss the fundamental aspects of genetic testing and the role of interdisciplinary collaboration between clinicians and molecular geneticists.

➡The podcast is sponsored by AstraZeneca and is available upon registration here: https://onkologia-dziecieca.pl/podcasty

12/11/2025

📣We are thrilled to share that Jakub Mieczkowski from IRA3P is one of the main organizers of the 1st Polish Space Medicine Conference, taking place on 13th and 14th of November in Military Institute of Aviation Medicine in Warsaw.

🚀 The 1st National Conference on Space Medicine in Poland brings together scientists, clinicians, and technologists exploring how the human body adapts to life beyond Earth. From AI applications to -omics research and cosmic radiation studies – you can discover Poland’s contribution to this rapidly growing field.

➡Listen here to learn more about the Polish contribution in space medicine: https://tinyurl.com/ycyvpdnw

➡More about the event: https://wiml.gumed.edu.pl/

07/11/2025

❓Curious about the First Team project, funded by Fundacja na rzecz Nauki Polskiej recently launched in our unit?

🎙️Tune in to the Polish Radio podcast featuring Jakub Mieczkowski, the project leader, who explains our innovative approach using liquid biopsy for glioma diagnostics.

➡Listen here:

O wykorzystaniu ciekłej biopsji do diagnostyki guza mózgu opowiada prof. J. Mieczkowski z GUMedu, a prof. H. Turski z IWC PAN - o wykorzystaniu obu stron podłoża z azotku galu do integracji urządzeń optoelektronicznych i elektronicznych.

05/11/2025

🎓 We are proud to share that our PhD student at IRA3P, Maria Andreou, successfully defended her thesis yesterday at the Department of Pharmacy – with distinction!

🧬Under the supervision of Arkadiusz Piotrowski, Maria worked on molecular classification of microscopically healthy mammary tissue collected from the patients diagnoses with sporadic breast cancer. The genomic and transcriptomic analysis showed the existence of intermediate state, where seemingly healthy normal tissue harbor alteration driving tumor initiation and metastasis. This tissue has been shown to play an active role in cancer progression through early tumorigenic processes.

📰 Maria’s dissertation was prepared as a hybrid format and presents the results three papers published in PLOS ONE, NPJ Brest Cancer and International Journal of Cancer (total IF=15.3) as well as one manuscript that is currently under review in BMC Cancer.

👏 Huge congratulations to Maria for achieving this important milestone in your scientific career! Throughout your PhD, you proved to be a dedicated, creative, and passionate researcher and we wish you continued success and inspiration in the future!

30/10/2025

❓ No doubt we live in the era of artificial intelligence. It has become an integral part of the daily work of scientists and clinicians. Yesterday on Radio Gdańsk Jakub Mieczkowski, PhD from IRA3P and dr Marcin Ekman shared their opinions about the digital solution in the world of science and medicine.

💡Jakub stressed that AI in medicine has a long history. The first attempts to use it in diagnostics date back to the 1970s and 1980s. While modern models, such as popular language models, rely mainly on statistical analysis and predicting the next elements based on large datasets, they don’t understand medicine the way a doctor does. Their purpose is not to replace specialists but to support them in analyzing complex information.

🧬 A good example of such approach is the First Team project granted to Jakub by Fundacja na rzecz Nauki Polskiej, that has been just launched in our unit. Jakub and his team will use machine learning to analyze features of circulating DNA fragments to develop new, non-invasive diagnostic methods for patients with brain tumors.

🎙️If you want to learn more about AI and its role in medicine listen to the broadcast on Radio Gdańsk: https://tinyurl.com/cw2vzxsu

24/10/2025

📣 We are excited to announce that our new paper “Comprehensive genetic screening of 70 severe adolescent idiopathic scoliosis probands reveals novel pathogenic variants and syndromic associations” has just been published in Frontiers in Medicine (Q1, IF = 3.0)! This publication presents the key findings from Monika Horbacz’s PhD project under the supervision of Arkadiusz Piotrowski and Magdalena Koczkowska, PhD.

🤝 This study is the result of an excellent collaboration with orthopedic surgeon Rafal Pankowski, who led the project from the clinical side.

💡The study shows that about one in seven patients with severe idiopathic scoliosis carries a pathogenic genetic variant, revealing that many “idiopathic” cases have an underlying genetic cause. It highlights the genetic heterogeneity of scoliosis and recommends integrating whole exome and SNP array analyses into clinical diagnostics to enable personalized genetic counseling and management.

➡You can read full article at: https://tinyurl.com/28hhb6mt

Photo: Paweł Sudara