We know this year's winner of the Professor Wacław Szybalski Award of the Biotechnology Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences for the best scientific publication of 2024. The winner is dr hab. Karolina Pierzynowska, prof. UG from the Faculty of Biology at the University of Gdańsk. The Committee recognised her research on correcting the symptoms of Huntington's disease. Congratulations!

The head of the Laboratory of Molecular Neurogenetics at the Department of Molecular Biology of the University of Gdańsk, dr hab. Karolina Pierzynowska, prof. UG, was recognised for her collective work Pierzynowska K, Podlacha M, Gaffke L, Rintz E, Wiśniewska K, Cyske Z, Węgrzyn G. Correction of symptoms of Huntington disease by genistein through FOXO3-mediated autophagy stimulation. Autophagy (doi: 10.1080/15548627.2023.2286116). The article describes how the stimulation of autophagic processes through the use of genistein reduces the level of abnormally folded huntingtin and corrects the symptoms of Huntington's disease in mice.

The Professor Wacław Szybalski Biotechnology Committee Awards of the Polish Academy of Sciences have been presented since 2011 to young researchers (aged up to 35) for the best experimental work in the field of biotechnology carried out and published in the year preceding the award. According to the rules of the competition, the work should be carried out in a Polish laboratory and published in an indexed Polish or foreign journal.

Detailed information about this year's award can be found on the website of the Biotechnology Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

We also invite you to read an interview with prof. Karolina Pierzynowska published on the University of Gdańsk website.