Lab News
2023
January
- Our lab secured a new grant! Our project proposal was successful in a recent University of Cyprus funding round, securing €59.350 for a two-year project, with the title "Developing a pain biosensor for cancer patients using a novel pain biomarker" (PIONEER). Our project was reviewed by two independent external reviewers and assessed with 9/10 points for excellence. The project is a collaboration with the PI, Dr Nikolas Dietis, and the co-PIs Dr Chrysafis Andreou and Dr Daina Nikolaou. The research team includes two Medical Students, Ms Mikaella Chrysostomou and Ms Mikaella Kitiri. More about the PIONEER project to come soon.
Click below on the year you're interested in checking Past News
2016
October
- We finalised the purchase the first set of basic and specialised equipment of the Lab! Visit our Facilities section for more details!
September
- The Lab opens its doors for the first time, at the newly built laboratory wing of the Siakolas Educational Centre for Clinical Medicine building (Medical School, UCY) We are very excited and look forward to a productive period ahead!
2017
October
- Our Lab hosted a workshop on Laboratory Diagnosis of Diphtheria, co-organized by the WHO Global Collaborating Centre for Diphtheria, Public Health England (UK), the WHO Regional Office for Europe (Denmark) and the University of Cyprus Medical School. Twitt link
- Our Lab welcomes four Interns who will receive laboratory training and will be working in various projects. The Interns are all 5th year Medical students at the University of Cyprus and thee are: Ms Chrystalla Sourouppi, Ms Irene Tsapa, Mr Alexandros Georgiou, Ms Ifigenia Yioti and Ms Georgia Christodoulou.
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September
- Dr Nikolas Dietis talks about the advantages of using a multi-conditioning system in rodent behavioural research, in his article at the September Newsletter issue of the International Behavioural Neuroscience Society (IBNS), in which he was invited to serve as a guest Editor.
- The Lab welcomes a new member! Dr Marina Demetriades has joined us as a post-doctoral researcher with the aim to establish the lab's Drug Library and develop specific screening assays for targeting. Marina has an organic chemistry background and a solid experience in biochemistry. Her previous post was at the University of Oxford (UK) where she worked with Prof Francis Barr on phosphoprotein phosphatases and their role in cell cycle regulation, as potential new cancer targets. Marina is funded by the University of Cyprus Post-Doctoral Program 2017 after a successful proposal.
August
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April
- Dr Nikolas Dietis gave an open lecture with the title "Drug Repurposing: a powerful alternative strategy to Drug Discovery & Development" at the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cyprus. The lecture introduced the concept of drug repurposing and its important central role in the paradigm shift of drug discovery.
March
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- The Lab initiated and played a leading role towards the final agreement and signing of an Agreement of Cooperation between the University of Cyprus and the Institute of Materia Medica of the People's Republic of China. The Agreement was initiated by fruitful discussions between Dr Dietis and Professor Guan-Ηua Du (Director of Chinese Pharmacological Society, Vice President of Institutes of Pharmaceutical Science, Director of the National Center for Pharmaceutical Screening in the Institute of Materia Medica). The signed Agreement includes future efforts for research collaboration, co-organization of research and academic activities, as well as exchange of students & staff for training purposes and sharing of research know-how.
February
- Dr Dietis had a very constructive discussion with the Director of State General Laboratory (SGL) of the Republic of Cyprus, Dr Popi Kanari, and the Senior Analyst of the Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Control (Lab 4), Mrs Dora Partassides, for collaborating on possible common research areas between the Lab and the SGL. Dr Kanari & Ms Partassides offered the SGL's support on our lab's efforts to establish a local consortium on drug discovery & repurposing.
January
- The Lab participated in the submission of an Integrated Grant proposal, as a key partner, at the Research Promotion Foundation of Cyprus "Restart 2016-2020" grand round, with the lead of our collaborator Dr Andreani Odysseos.
2018
October
- New interns in town! Six bright, enthousiastic and ambitious interns have joined our lab to form our new lab group membership for the academic years 2018-2019 and 2019-2020. The team of six include three 2nd year Med students (Ms Melani Theodoridou, Mr Antonis Pylavas and Mr Nikolas Ververides) and three 3rd year Med students (Ms Aigli Kosti, Ms Persefoni Panayi and Mr Andreas Menikou). The young undergrads will be trained fully and work on current lab projects. Welcome!
November
- Our lab has started a collaboration with the group of Dr Dimitris Tsaltas (Associate Professor) at the Department of Agricultural Sciences, Biotechnology & Food Sciences, at CUT. The two labs will be collaborating on a pharmacological screening of endophytes grown out of Cypriot plants.
June
- Our automated zebrafish facility received an official licence by the Vet Services of the Republic of Cyprus for using zebrafish as an experimental model organism in biomedical research, becoming the first zebrafish facility in Cyprus!
2019
February
- New paper published! Dr Dietis is one of the authors in a book chapter entitled "Computational Drug Repurposing for Neurodegenerative Diseases" in a new published book by Elsevier with the title "In Silico Drug Design Repurposing Techniques and Methodologies", 12th Edition, by Editor Dr Kunal Roy. You can find the book here.
March
- New project funded! Our Lab received a two-year funding from UCY for a study on antimicrobial resistance. The new project named "University of CypruS acTion Against antimicRobial resisTance (START)" will be the first laboratory based exploratory research project in Cyprus against antimicrobial resistance. START will aim to set up a compound library of novel drugs, clinical drugs and extracts from plant bacteria that will be pharmacologically screened against a bacterial bank of sensitive and resistant bacteria, with the aim to discover new antimicrobial agents and drugs that can reduce antimicrobial resistance.
May
- New Lab member recruited! Ms Christy Pavlou has joined our lab as a Postgraduate Associate / Research Assistant and will be working on our START project. Christy has a solid academic background in Biomedical Science and Neuroscience, and a previous experience as a research assistant at the St.Mary's Hospital London - Imperial College. Find out more about Christy by clicking here.
August
- TIWI career outreach project. Dr Dietis participated in a science career outreach project by the ReSciTEG (Research in Science and Technology Education Group) at UCY, working on the TIWI project (Teaching ICT With Inquiry), aiming to promote science careers to students in primary and secondary education. Dr Dietis talked about the skills and knowledge required to become an academic Pharmacologist. For more details and a video produced, visit this LINK.
October
- New paper published! Our group participated in a recent work on the chemistry & molecular pharmacology of a novel compound, leading the work on mitochondria localization studies using our lab's FRET technology. The paper was part of a collaboration with Dr Andreani Odyssaios and Dr Savvas Georgiades, entitled "A Novel Conjugate of Bis[((4-bromophenyl)amino)quinazoline], a EGFR-TK Ligand, with a Fluorescent Ru(II)-Bipyridine Complex Exhibits Specific Subcellular Localization in Mitochondria" which was published in the journal Molecular Pharmaceutics (Impact Factor 5.36). You can find the paper here.
- New internship round - old folks leaving, newbies joined! We are happy to welcome nine new Interns in the lab, 2nd year UCY Medicine students, who will be joining the lab research activities participating and working on specific research projects. The newbies are Mr Charalambos Anagnostopoulos, Mrs Christina Pasiouli, Mr Petros Pieri, Mr Stephanos Hilides and Mr Argyris Constantinou (working at antibacterial screenings), Mrs Marina Evaggelou, Mrs Sophia Filipou and Mrs Stephani Hadjievagorou (working in anticancer screenings) and Mr Konstantinos Mrs Sykallos and Mrs Vasiliki Vasileiou (working in toxicological screenings in zebrafish larvae). At the same time, we thank and appreciate the work of leaving interns Mrs Aigli Kosti, Mrs Persefoni Panayi and Mr Andreas Menoikou and wish them all the best to the rest of their academic careers. Hip Hip hooray!
2020
December
- Best Paper Award in an International Conference! Our group, in collaboration with Dr Andreani Odyssaios' team and colleagues from Japan, have published a conference paper at the GLOBECOM 2020 - EEE Global Communications Conference which took place in Taiwan in December. Our paper entitled "Growing Bio-nanomachine Networks: Application to Malignant Tumor Evolution and Progression" received the Best Paper Award. You can find our paper here.
2021
January
New paper published! Our collaboration with Dr Chrysafis Andreou (Head of the Nanotechnology Imaging and Detection Laboratory), produced a neat paper on novel nanoparticles entitled "Resveratrol loaded polymeric micelles for theranostic targeting of breast cancer cells", published in the journal Nanotheranostics (Impact Factor 5.28). You can find the paper here.
May
- New paper published! Our ongoing collaboration with Dr George Spyrou's team on drug repurposing has produced a new paper entitled "Multi-omics data integration and network-based analysis drives a multiplex drug repurposing approach to a shortlist of candidate drugs against COVID-19", published in the journal Briefings in Bioinformatics (Impact Factor 11.62). The paper can be found here.
July
- New paper published! Based on our expertise in opioid molecular and behavioural pharmacology, we worked on profiling the effects of repetitive morphine administration in rodents. Our data resulted in exciting insights in the effect of dosing regimen to opioid tolerance. We published our data in the journal Molecules (Impact Factor 4.93), entitled "Profiling the Effects of Repetitive Morphine Administration on Motor Behavior in Rats". You can find the paper here.
- Our group presented a poster at the 2021 International Narcotics Research Conference, held online in July. Our poster was presented by Dr Alok Paul entitled "Effects of mixed-profile opioid UTA1003 on analgesic tolerance and motor behaviour", which included data from our recent work on a novel synthetic opioid and its tolerance profile in rats.
September
- New paper published! Our team's expertise in opioid pharmacology has published a review article through a collaboration with Universities in Australia, Bangladesh, Thailand and Austria. The paper entitled "Opioid Analgesia and Opioid-Induced Adverse Effects: A Review" was published in the journal Pharmaceuticals (Impact Factor 5.68) and can be found here.
October
- EPL organized an open and hybrid lecture by Dr Tassos Kyriakides, from the Yale Center for Analytical Sciences at Yale School of Public Health, entitled: "Health benefits of olive oil: the evidence and the data speak". The lecture was held at the Lecture Theatre "Nikos Shakolas" at the University of Cyprus Medical School on Tuesday 26th October 2021, and was open to the UCY students and the public. The lecture was live streamed.
November
- New paper published! The first ever collaboration of researchers from the top-5 Universities in Cyprus was led by Dr Nikolas Dietis and produced a publication entitled "Gaps in Knowledge About SARS-CoV-2 & COVID-19 Among University Students Are Associated With Negative Attitudes Toward People With COVID-19: A Cross-Sectional Study in Cyprus", published in the Journal Frontiers in Public Health (Impact Factor 3.02). The paper can be found here.
December
- An exciting new collaboration has started with the Dr Antonis Kirmizis (Head of the Laboratory of Epigenetics and Gene Regulation). The collaboration will involve the joint co-supervision of a Masters student (Ms Maria Kouma) and research work on HTS drug repurposing screening for the identification of NAA40 inhibitors, using a fluorescent-based enzymatic assay. More on this soon!
2022
March
- New paper published! Our ongoing collaboration with Dr George Spyrou's team at the Cyprus Institute of Neurology & Genetics has produced an excellent paper as a research output, entitled "Network-based stage-specific drug repurposing for Alzheimer’s disease", published at the Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal (Impact Factor 7.27). The paper can be found here.
June
- New paper published! Our research on novel analgesic compounds resulted in exciting data on a newly designed opioid compound named UTA1003. In our paper, published at Molecules (Impact Factor 4.93), entitled "Differential Effects of a Novel Opioid Ligand UTA1003 on Antinociceptive Tolerance and Motor Behaviour" can be found here.
July
- New paper published! Our ongoing collaboration with Dr Andreani Odyssaios' group at EPOS Iasis, produced a conference paper presented at the 2022 IEEE 16th International Symposium on Medical Information and Communication Technology (ISMICT), entitled "Optically Active Bionanomachine Interfaces Build Therapeutic Nanonetworks for Glioblastoma Multiforme". The paper was published in the conference's proceedings and can be found here.
September
- Our group was invited to participate in two new projects of the Clinical Research Working Group at the European Association for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (EACPT)! The first project entitled "Assessment of drug response variability" will address the variability of drug responses according to social, geographical and genetic variability and provide guidelines to improve medical and scientific practices in the field of pharmacotherapy. The second project entitled "The use of registered reports in clinical pharmacology and therapeutics” aims to explore the use of this novel publishing format in the field of clinical pharmacology and therapeutics. More about the Working Group here.
October
- Our group, in collaboration with Dr Chrysafis Andreou and Dr Giota Gregoriou, has presented a poster at the 1st National Conference on Molecular Life Sciences by the Society of Biological Sciences in Cyprus, at 23rd of October in Nicosia. Our poster was presented by our Lab member Ms Despoina Vangeli, entitled "In vivo Kinetic and Toxicity analysis of Coumarin-6 Nanoparticles in Zebrafish (Danio Rerio)". The poster included in vivo data from our recent work on zebrafish toxicology of novel nanoparticles.
November
- Our group, in collaboration with Dr Andreani Odyssaios, has presented a poster at the 4th Cyprus Oncology Conference ‘Making progress in Cancer Care with Research Innovation and Multidisciplinary Collaboration’, which took part in Limassol at 7th November. Our poster had the title "Bio-nanomachine networking and communication in Glioblastoma Multiforme as a target for novel therapies", produced by our Lab member Ms Xeni Kosofidou, included data from our research work on exosome-based cellular communication as a potential therapeutic tool against glioblastoma.
December
- New paper published! Our ongoing collaboration with Dr George Spyrou's team at the Cyprus Institute of Neurology & Genetics has produced a paper on an innovative bioninformatics tool called Vir2Drug. The paper, entitled "Vir2Drug: a drug repurposing framework based on protein similarities between pathogens" was published in the journal Briefings in Bioinformatics (Impact Factor 11.62) and can be found here.