"Award of Excellence" for the Dissertation of PMU Researcher Lukas Zell
The Austrian State Prize "Award of Excellence" annually honors the 40 best dissertations of the past academic year. In 2024, Lukas Zell's PhD dissertation from the Institute of Pharmacy received an award—this is already the second PMU PhD dissertation to be awarded the State Prize. In his dissertation, Lukas Zell addresses central nervous system diseases such as Parkinson's and schizophrenia—and how the side effects of medications for treating these conditions can be reduced.
The career of 31-year-old Lukas Zell from Vienna is described as a prime example of versatile and highly qualified education as a foundation for a steep scientific career, emphasizes Professor Daniela Schuster, Dean of Pharmacy at Paracelsus Medical Private University (PMU) and supervisor of the dissertation. After attending HTBLVA in Vienna with a focus on chemistry, Lukas Zell studied Molecular Biology at the university level in Salzburg and Linz, followed by a Master's degree in Medical Biology. In 2019, he joined the PMU Institute of Pharmacy as a scientific staff member through an industry cooperation, where, as a PhD student, he was "drawn deeper into science," as Daniela Schuster puts it.
Central nervous system (CNS) diseases present a significant global health issue. An important goal in the treatment of these diseases is a group of cell surface proteins known as dopamine receptors (DRs), part of a larger family of receptors for this neurotransmitter in the brain. Many medications focus on these receptors but often cause severe and highly unpleasant side effects for patients due to interactions with similar receptors, and their bioavailability is limited by poor solubility.
To discover new drug candidates that bind more selectively to clinically relevant dopamine receptors, Lukas Zell and the team at the Pharmacy Institute developed a combined computational ("in silico") and laboratory-based ("in vitro") approach. With this innovative approach, they successfully identified promising new compounds: "One of the compounds discovered stood out for its high selectivity for D3 receptors, and therefore has very high potential as a drug candidate for reducing the risk of unwanted side effects," says Dr. Thomas Caspari, Head of the Medical Science PhD program. "Lukas Zell’s outstanding research demonstrates how effectively combining various scientific techniques can lead to better, more targeted treatments for CNS diseases while simultaneously improving drug development in laboratory tests to benefit millions of patients worldwide."
As part of his PhD in Medical Science, Lukas Zell published three first-author papers and one co-authorship. The study "Impact of 2-hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin inclusion complex formation on dopamine receptor-ligand interaction - A case study" was published in 2024 among the top 10% of the field.
Link to the publication: Impact of 2-hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin inclusion complex formation on dopamine receptor-ligand interaction – A case study - ScienceDirect
// Translated by ChatGPT
