New biotechnology centre opens near Prague

Prague, Oct 30 (CTK) - The new Czech Biotechnology and Biomedicine Centre (Biocev) officially started working yesterday, though its complex in Vestec near Prague is to be completed in two years only, and it has already reported successes in medical research.

Most of its 2.8-billion-crown budget is covered from EU funds (2.3 billion) and the rest from the state budget.

Education Minister Petr Fiala pointed out on this occasion that similar top research centres can help the Czech Republic succeed economically in international competition.

Biocev is a joint project of the Czech Science Academy (AV) and Prague's Charles University focusing on biotechnological and biomedical research. It wants to attract researchers from abroad to its "functional genomics" programme.

Its coordinator Radislav Sedlacek and his team have already developed red shining laboratory mice that may considerably help develop new medicines for and methods of skin diseases treatment.

Next year, researchers are to start working on another four programmes focused on cellular biology and virology, protein and tissue engineering and the development of new methods of treatment.

The centre should fulfill all conditions set for granting the subsidy by the end of 2015, said Biocev council chairman Vaclav Horejsi, from the AV's Institute of Molecular Genetics.

The final budget will be clear only on the basis of the tenders for the centre's constructions.

The centre is to employ 600 people in its full operation.

Apart from established researchers, up to 250 young scientists from the university are to be trained in the centre, too.

Moreover, firms will be able to use the centre's state-of-the-art devices for their own research with the aim to apply as many results as possible in practice.

Biocev is one of the six approved giant scientific projects funded by EU subsidies, dubbed centres of excellence, with the total budget of 21 billion crowns.

They include the superlaser ELI, to be built in Dolni Brezany near Prague, and the Central European Institute of Technology (CEITEC) in Brno.

"The Czech Republic is purposefully supporting the projects of establishing top research centres, such as Biocev... Experience from abroad shows that support to really high-quality science pays in the long term," Fiala said.

($1=19.398 crowns)