Dr. Anna Pasternak is Associate Professor working at one of the leading scientific institutions in Poland – Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences (IBCH PAS). She received her PhD degree in chemistry from IBCH PAS in 2008. Afterwards, Dr. Pasternak as the Postdoctoral Fellow joined research team of Prof. Jesper Wengel (University of Southern Denmark). In 2011 she returned to IBCH PAS and in 2015 she received DSc (habilitation) degree in chemistry/biochemistry. In 2016 her own research group was established and she became the head of Department of Nucleic Acids Bioengineering, ICHB PAS.
She was awarded the prestigious scholarship from the President of Polish Academy of Sciences for the best PhD students (2004-2007) and scholarship for outstanding young scientists from the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (2014-2017).
She regularly publishes in international peer-revived journals with high impact factor and wide visibility. Number of her publications were put on F1000 biology list identifies the most highly rated articles.
Dr. Anna Pasternak is a young scientist with great achievements in an interdisciplinary research focused on development of novel molecular tools and devices based on nucleic acids and their analogues. She conducts research on their chemical modifications which allow modulation of physicochemical and biological properties of oligonucleotides in predictable and controllable manner. Her work provided evidences that oligonucleotides with improved properties can be applied as useful therapeutic or highly specific diagnostic tools. She is the team leader of the research group working with great success on number of topic including:
- thermodynamics of chemically modified canonical and non-canonical nucleic acids structures (duplexes, hairpins, G-quadruplexes, triplexes, i-motifs)
- controlled regulation of gene expression by antisense strategies
- alternative splicing regulation in cancer cell lines
- development of potent anticoagulants based on modified oligonucleotides
- in vitro studies of chemically modified G-quadruplexes and their antiproliferative properties
Dr. Anna Pasternak believes that majority of therapeutic and diagnostics challenges can be fully reached by well-thought-out combination of chemical and biological approaches. Her research group is interdisciplinary and includes enthusiastic, young and highly motivated biologists that work hand in hand with chemists and easily combine their broad knowledge to reach various interdisciplinary scientific goals.
