Centre with state-of-the-art microscopes opened at Bulgarian Academy of Sciences

A centre with state-of-the-art microscopes was opened on November 15 at the Institute of Molecular Biology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The microscopes will be used in the fight against cancer to identify the effect of various drugs, including anticancer drugs, on the human cell. The center is one of twenty in Europe. The appliances in it are worth BGN 3 million and are funded by the government and various funds.

In order to get a human organism, a cell divides 30 trillion times. The human body has 200 cell types and even if we live "as angels", each cell receives over 70,000 damage in one lifetime. Therefore, they must be monitored and studied in order for medicine to successfully combat diseases such as cancer, Eitzheimer and Parkinson. The new microscopes of the Institute of Molecular Biology will do just that - they will study living cells of the human body.

Assoc. Prof. Stoyno Stoynov, Institute of Molecular Biology: We will be able to see how, for example, anticancer drugs act on the human body, on the human cell.

The Institute studies PARP inhibitors. They are big hope in the fight against cancer and are related to DNA repair. New PARP inhibitors are currently being sought, for which the microscopes will help.

Iva Ugrinova, Director of the Institute of Molecular Biology, explained that the hope is that scientists may reveal why these inhibitors stop working after some time and the cancer tissue develops resistance. These are all important points and I hope that our colleagues would be able to find the answer, she said.

Scientists from all over Bulgaria and Europe will be able to use the microscopes.