Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology
The Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology in Warsaw is part of the Polish Academy of Sciences. It is a leading Polish research institution specializing in neurobiology, molecular biology, and biochemistry with main interests focused on studies that can be directly translated to health protection and improving quality of life, including novel therapies and diagnostic methods in cancer, diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases, neurological disorders, and other diseases of modern civilization.
Our team has a broad experience in studying signalling pathways implicated in metabolic diseases and lipid absorption both in vivo and in vitro. We are involved mainly in work packages that aim at understanding molecular as well as genetic bases of childhood obesity and identifying novel drug targets (WP3 and WP4).
People
Grzegorz Sumara leads the Dioscuri Centre for Metabolic Diseases at the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology since 2020. He earned a PhD from the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich. Later, he was a postdoctoral HFSP fellow at Columbia University in New York and briefly at IGBMC in Strasbourg. Before joining Nencki Institute, Grzegorz led a research group at the Rudolf Virchow Centre in Würzburg. Awarded the Emmy Noether grant and an ERC Starting Grant, he explored hormonally-induced signaling cascades in adipocytes and hepatocytes, establishing Protein kinase D (PKD) as a key regulator of energy metabolism. His current work focuses on the interplay of signaling molecules during metabolic diseases like obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Dominika Malińska, PhD
Dominika obtained her PhD in Biology in 2010, at the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology (Warsaw, Poland). Both her PhD and further post-doctoral research focused on mitochondrial physiology, the interplay between mitochondria and other components of cellular bioenergetics, such as glycogen metabolism, as well as the involvement of these organelles in cellular adaptation to stress. In 2024 she joined Dioscuri Centre for Metabolic Diseases at the Nencki Institute, where she continues her research on cellular bioenergetics in the context of obesity development.
