Martin

Martin Andrš, PharmDr., Ph.D.

Brief introduction

Scientist and Ironman who focuses on molecular biology, but is also interested in astrophysics and geography. He loves doing sports in nature and spending time with his wife. Enjoys death and black metal music from Scandinavia, along with sci-fi and fantasy movies. He firmly believes he will qualify for the Ironman World Championship on Hawaii.

🧬 🏊 🚵 🏃 🤘

Research

Martin began his studies at the Faculty of Pharmacy at Charles University in Hradec Králové, Czech Republic. To do his Master’s thesis, he joined the Department of Toxicology at the Faculty of Military Health Sciences, where focused on synthesizing novel acetylcholinesterase inhibitors for Alzheimer's disease. He continued in the same department for his Ph.D., although with a new focus on developing inhibitors of ATM and DNA-PK kinases as potential chemo and radiosensitizers for cancer treatment, specifically concerning the design, synthesis, and evaluation of synthetic compounds. Throughout his studies, he became increasingly interested in the biology of DNA damage, a passion furthered by two Erasmus+ internships in Jiří Bártek’s laboratory in Copenhagen and Rodrigo Bermejo’s laboratory in Madrid. To pursue this interest, he joined Jiří Bártek's laboratory at the Institute of Molecular Genetics in Prague, working in a subgroup led by Pavel Janš?ák as a postdoctoral researcher. In this lab, he engaged in ongoing projects examining the resolution of transcription-replication conflicts and R-loop formation. During this time, he found that DNA replication slowdown due to elevated ROS levels increases the incidence of TRCs and R-loop formation, contributing to replication stalling and genome instability. This discovery significantly enhanced our understanding of how and why R-loops are formed. Following this, he moved to the Institute of Molecular Cancer Research at the University of Zurich, where he focused on two research projects, each investigating a different source of oxidative stress. In the first project, he established that genomic R-loops, resulting from mitochondrial ROS release rather than DNA adducts or crosslinks, cause DNA replication stress in cells treated with low-dose cisplatin. Additionally, inhibiting key components of transcription-replication conflict resolution, such as MUS81 or PRIMPOL, sensitized cancer cells to cisplatin treatment. The second project, led by Ph.D. student Markéta Dvořáková at the University of Zurich, investigates the role of oxidative stress in R-loop formation following oncogene activation.

Triathlon

Triathlon has been a part of Martin's life. It all began 26 years ago when he was 10 and joined the TRI-Ski team in Horní Počernice, a suburb of Prague. It was an amazing group of friends, which was why they remained committed to this unusual sport at that time. He wasn’t very good, but he tried to keep up with the others. After a few years, in the junior category, his hard work started to pay off, leading to my first podiums and wins. During college, his priorities shifted, but he still managed to participate in a race or two each year. The real effort began during his Ph.D. studies, with the support of Šárka. He teamed up with Hradec Králové stars Honza Volár and Pavel Petrásek, focusing on half Ironman with a distant goal of completing a full Ironman in the future. Each year, he pushed myself to improve. However, illnesses and COVID kept setting him back. In 2021, he completed my first Ironman in Vitoria-Gasteiz with a time of 8 hours and 20 minutes; unfortunately, the swimming portion was canceled due to fog. So, the full completion had to wait another two years due to an injury in 2022. In 2023, he finally finished the Ironman Switzerland and was even nominated for the Ironman World Championship in Nice that same year. On the challenging course of the Nice Ironman, he finished as the first Czech representative with a time of 10 hours and 13 minutes, placing 31st in his age category. He still hopes to be nominated to the cradle of triathlon in Hawaii one day.

Gallery

Contact

In the case, the Outlook doesn’t work.

andrs@imcr.uzh.ch