We are delighted to announce that Dr Grzegorz Grabe, Independent Group Leader — Bacterial Toxin–Antitoxin Systems in the MRS Lab, has been awarded the prestigious FIRST TEAM FENG grant from the Foundation for Polish Science (FNP).
Project title: Innovative use of bacterial toxins to enhance protein production
Funding amount: 3,987,800 PLN
Project duration: 4 years
About the project
The project aims to re-engineer bacterial toxins to boost the efficiency of recombinant protein production — a key step towards sustainable and economically viable biomanufacturing technologies. The research will be conducted in collaboration with Prof. Charlotte Michaux (Université de Rennes, France), an expert in bacterial transcriptomics, and Acteryon, a biotech company specializing in protein production and process scale-up.
About Grzegorz
Grzegorz is a microbiologist and structural biologist exploring the intricate world of bacterial toxin–antitoxin (TA) modules, compact operons crucial for bacterial survival under stress conditions such as phage infection, antibiotic exposure, or macrophage uptake. His group investigates the evolutionary dynamics of TA interfaces and the molecular mechanisms governing transcriptional activation within these systems.
He joined the Intercollegiate Faculty of Biotechnology UG & GUMed in 2023 as part of a POLONEZ BIS fellowship (NCN & EU), and has since received additional funding from NCN (OPUS 26, 2024) and EMBO (Installation Grant, 2025).
Recruitment
New positions for PhD students and postdocs will be announced soon. Follow updates on the IFB website, LinkedIn, and X.
Congratulations, Grzegorz!
