Head of the Department of Translational Medical Bioengineering, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor Olexander Galkin and Senior lecturer at the Department of Translational Medical Bioengineering, Candidate of Technical Sciences (Ph. D.)
Tetiana Lutsenko have become the winners of the Prize of the President of Ukraine for young scientists in 2020. The scientists were awarded for the series of works “Development of analytical biotechnology for the needs of immunological diagnostics”. They conducted their developments jointly with a colleague from О.V. Palladin Institute of Biochemistry of the NAS of Ukraine. The research includes creating new and improving existing medical devices for immunological diagnosis of infectious diseases and allergic conditions and assessing the state of human immunity.
Such studies are always interdisciplinary. On the one hand, such projects need a deep study of the interaction of pathogens with the human body at the molecular level. On the other hand, the result of such developments is medical devices. These new devices are subject to strict requirements of new technical regulations, such as European Union directives. Therefore, the implementation of such complex tasks involves specialists in molecular biology, biotechnology, and biomedical engineering.
As for the winners, it is worth mentioning that the Department of Translational Medical Bioengineering is the youngest department of the FBME. Impressive progress in biomedical science and technologies, and the demand for relevant specialists motivated Rector Mykhailo Zgurovsky and Dean of the FBME Vitalii Maksymenko to create a new bioengineering department.
The Academic Council of the University supported this initiative in late 2018. The scientific direction of the department is the engineering and technological foundations of translational medicine.
Translational medicine is a modern industry providing rapid implementation (translation) of fundamental discoveries in natural sciences into health care practice. Today the department prepares bachelors and masters in the study programme “Regenerative and Biopharmaceutical Engineering”, as well as doctors of philosophy in the study programmes “Applied Biology” and “Biomedical Engineering”.
The staff of the department is small but young and ambitious. The vast majority is young scientists under the age of 40. During the two years of the department's existence, the staff trained students at all three higher education levels. The department’s postgraduate students study in two specialties: 091 “Biology” and 163 “Biomedical Engineering”. When the National Research Foundation of Ukraine announced the competition “Science for human and social security”, the FBME participated and won it. It was the first serious success of the department. As a result, the department is implementing two projects: “Development of the concept of training and retraining in biosafety and biosecurity” and “Experimental study of efficacy and safety use of new phytochemical and bacterial drugs for the treatment of coronavirus and other common infections”. The latter is carried out in cooperation with Lev Gromashevsky Institute of Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases of the NAMS of Ukraine.
The department intends to cooperate with the Scientific-Practical Medical Center for Pediatric Cardiology and Cardio Surgery of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine for developing bioimplants for the needs of cardiac surgery. Also, scientists of the department are working on other projects in biomedical engineering and medical biotechnology. They want to work with both domestic and foreign companies, as well as research centers.
We wish the staff of the Department of Translational Medical Bioengineering impressive gains and victories in the future.