The Laboratory of Molecular, Translational and Digital Medicine

The new laboratory is one of six scientific laboratories for Young Scientists created with the help of the World-Class Research and Academic Centre “Kuzbass” in 2021.

Young Scientist Anton Kutikhin, PhD, known for his studies in the field of atherosclerosis, was appointed head of the Laboratory.

“Talking about the key aspects of our research, I must mention the necessary end goal of translating clinical innovations into practice. For example, we are to conduct preclinical trials on treatment of abnormal mineral homeostasis for the prevention of atherosclerosis. A fundamentally new project, both for our Research Institute and for Kuzbass as a whole, is the development of the neural network model for automated diagnosis of circulatory system pathologies and analysis of cardiovascular disease risk factors. The neural networks research has a huge potential. We are planning to use the models for studying the heart transplant rejection - an urgent problem in clinical practice,” said Anton Kutikhin.    

10 new high-tech research jobs have been created to perform such advanced studies. Graduates of the Institute of Biology, Ecology and Natural Resources (Kemerovo State University) will be employed at the laboratory, and engineers from Tomsk universities will be employed to assist with the design and development of an artificial neural networks.

Only the best modern equipment will be purchased in order to complete the tasks, such as a high-resolution slide scanner that converts glass slides into high-resolution digital data by high-speed scanning. With this equipment a digital archive of histological slide collection can be created for the scientific and practical purposes.

The slide collection will allow clinicians and researchers to analyze the processes of reparative and pathological inflammation in small-diameter tissue-engineered grafts created at the Research Institute of Complex Problems of Cardiovascular Diseases, and to determine the degree of deterioration of impaired bioprosthetic heart valves produced in Kuzbass region.

Another important device is a multifunctional software/hardware complex for analyzing complex mixtures of biological molecules. It will be used for the analysis of the serum protein, which is necessary for conducting cardiovascular clinical trials.