Chemist Tomáš Fiala had an unusually successful last year, managing to obtain four major grants – an ERC Starting Grant, a Branco Weiss Fellowship, a grant from the Experientia Foundation, and the MUNI Award in Science and Humanities, which brought him back to Masaryk University.
After studying at Masaryk University, Tomáš Fiala left Czechia to gain experience abroad. First he went to the United States, where he earned his doctorate at Columbia University in New York, and then he moved to ETH Zurich in Switzerland. After ten years, he is returning to the Czech Republic.
What inspired you to study chemistry?
My father (editor’s note: Radovan Fiala) is a chemist. He is now retiring, but he was the head of the Josef Dadok National NMR Centre at CEITEC MU, and he influenced me a lot. Although at school I liked biology more, I found that I was much more successful in chemistry competitions than in biology competitions. So chemistry won out. However, over time, I found my way to the intersection of both disciplines, so in the end, I am doing exactly what I have enjoyed since my youth.
How would you rate your studies at MU?
Studying chemistry here was great. Even by global standards, the teaching was of a very high standard. As a doctoral student at Columbia University, I had to take five compulsory courses. In all of them, I outperformed my classmates by a considerable margin – thanks to Masaryk University, my theoretical foundations were much more solid. I also really appreciated the opportunity to get involved in research right from the first semester, which is not always possible around the world. I would like to thank Professor Vladimír Šindelář for taking me into his group when I knocked on his door in the second week of my studies to ask if I could work in the lab. The experience I gained working with him was absolutely crucial for my further growth as a scientist and my achievements.
What experiences do you bring back with you from abroad?
Columbia University is one of the world’s most prestigious universities. It has excellent research facilities staffed by top scientists, as well as amazing interdisciplinary collaboration. But my wife and I were not enthused about living in New York, so we returned to Europe. I received a scholarship from the European Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) and got a postdoctoral fellowship at ETH Zurich. We quite liked Switzerland and if I had the opportunity to lead my own research group there, I would probably have stayed.
But in the end, after ten years abroad, you chose to return. Why?
I received offers to set up a research group in either Konstanz, Germany, or Brno. Ultimately, I decided that Masaryk University was the better option. Unlike in Germany, I see that the situation in Czech science is improving year by year, even though it still lags behind the West overall.
How exactly are conditions for young scientists improving in the Czech Republic?
The main issue is financial support for young scientists. Launching world-class research is expensive, so it is good to see that the Czech Science Foundation has introduced the Junior Star scheme, which provides substantial support for the most promising young researchers in all fields of study. Universities are also coming up with their own ways to support new research groups – at Masaryk University, it is MASH StG/CoG, which is helping to launch my research and for which I am very grateful. Several schemes are also in place to support women returning to their research career after taking time off for maternity leave. Last but not least, there are also private sector funding entities, such as the Experientia Foundation, from which I received a Start-up Grant. The Technology Centre Prague now offers centralised support for applicants seeking prestigious European grants. As far as research infrastructure is concerned, we’ve been fortunate that a considerable amount of money has flowed into Czech Republic from the EU’s structural funds, thanks to which we now have state-of-the-art equipment. For instance, CEITEC has fantastic instrumentation and staffing, and I am very much looking forward to working with them. But there’s still a lot that needs to be done.
What other changes are required?
The Czech Republic still lacks sufficient government investment. Germany, for instance, allocates twice as much to science as a percentage of its GDP compared to the Czech Republic. And spending this money on research is a great investment. It brings not just research that could lead to sig-nificant discoveries and advance humanity in all areas. What is even more important is the connection between science and education. Training people to think innovatively leads to the establishment of new start-up companies that create high added value. And in turn, successful companies create good jobs and pay taxes. For Czechia to continue growing and truly catch up with the West, future governments must gradually double their investment in science and research.
What is your assessment of MU’s approach in this regard?
I have already mentioned the Grant Agency of Masaryk University. Personally, I also see great support from the Department of Chemistry and the Faculty of Science as a whole. The Department of Chemistry is building new facil-ities where my group will work – this effort to provide young researchers with modern laboratories for cutting-edge research funded by European projects is great and should not be taken for granted. Of course, the support could be even better. In the West, it is standard practice for holders of prestigious grants and their home institutions to receive an incentive bonus from the university for winning a grant, for example, in the form of a refund of part of the overhead costs or additional university funding. While I understand that MU’s pockets are not bottomless, I hope it will introduce a similar support scheme in the future, viewing it as a profitable investment to attract world-class scientific talent to Brno and win many more prestigious European grants.
You will be researching proteoforms using chemical probes to investigate the development of diseases such as Parkinson’s disease. Can you explain what proteoforms are?
You could say that DNA is a “cookbook” that contains instruc-tions for making our bodies, and proteins are the chefs who do the work. Now imagine that each of these protein chefs can use different tools – knives, forks, wooden spoons... These different types of tools the chef can use are the pro-teoforms. In other words, these are millions of protein variants that arise in the human body from approximately 70,000 proteins humans can synthesize. Proteins combine into complexes or are modified so they can perform various functions in different types of cells. Changes in their proper functioning are then associated with many diseases, including neurodegenerative ones.
What will you research about them and how?
Most drug development research focuses on blocking or activating a protein – to continue in my analogy, this is like forbidding or commanding the chef to cook. But cooking all or nothing is too extreme a choice. Sometimes we just need to regulate the chef ’s work. In my PROTEOFORMER project, we try to replace the chefs’ tools, that is switch between proteoforms. Previous research on proteoforms has used genetic engineering, i.e. changes to the DNA that are transferred to the chefs’ tools by altering the proteoform. We, on the other hand, want to manipulate proteoforms using purely chemical tools. This approach should be more accessible to the wider scientific community and could potentially facilitate the development of new drugs.
Who will you be collaborating with at MU?
I am very much looking forward to collaborating with several groups where our chemical tools can support cutting-edge biomedical research. I will mention two teams from CEITEC MU with whom collaboration is already beginning, namely Lukáš Trantírek’s research group, which is developing revolutionary methodologies for studying protein dynamics using NMR spectroscopy directly in organoids, i.e. cell cultures that mimic organs. We also share a student with Jozef Hritz, who uses biophysical methods to study proteins associated with neurodegenerative diseases.
Have you assembled a research team for your Laboratory of Bioorganic and Peptide Chemistry yet?
Not quite, but I already have most of the members. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the candidates I man-aged to recruit. In terms of postdoctoral researchers, we will be joined in December by a researcher from Imperial College London, followed in January by a highly experienced chemist from Konstanz in Germany. Two excellent Czech researchers with international experience will also be joining my team. I think we are poised to make a strong start.