Ewa Kozłowska with a bronze medal in Geneva

In February, Ewa Kozłowska and her team won a prize in the “Student-inventor” competition for a series of 26 inventions connected with obtaining steroid compounds of great therapeutic potential. The prize in the competition was a trip to Geneva and representing Poland in the 47th International Exhibition of Inventions.

The student of professor Tomasz Janeczko has just returned with two medals: bronze from the scientific committee of the exhibition and a medal granted by The University of King Abdulaziz. The scientists from Saudi Arabia took so much interest in the results of Ewa Kozłowska’s research that they decided to give her a special award.

- I use entomopathogenic hyphae fungi for biotransformation of steroid hormones. These fungi, which are obtained from caves and mining galleries of Lower Silesia, attack insects. The spore of a fungus falls on an insect, and while sprouting, it pierces through its chitin exoskeleton and develops inside the insect, gradually killing it. Not until the insect is dead, does it begin to develop outside, achieving sometimes amazing forms – she told our news site in February. – These same fungi have unexpected properties: they perform complicated, cascade hormone transformations: DHEA (a prehormone which is transformed into male and female sex hormones in the human body and has significant influence on human vitality and physical and mental condition) and progesterone and estrone – female sex hormones.

As a result of biotransformation Kozłowska obtained compounds (some previously unknown) which are beneficial for human body – they can be used in the treatment of cancers, autoimmunological diseases, allergies and with people after transplants.