Fighting resistant tumors with best-in-class inhibitors of casein kinase 1 (CK1)

Kamil Paruch, Ph.D., is associate professor of Organic Chemistry at Masaryk University. After earning his Ph.D. in organic chemistry at Columbia University (New York, USA), he worked in drug discovery (oncology) at Schering-Plough Research Institute (now Merck). After spending 13 years in the US, he returned to the Czech Republic. Since 2009, his research at Masaryk University has been focused on novel organic molecules with targeted biological activity, especially those potentially applicable in modern oncology. In particular, the team of Prof. Paruch has identified several classes of new potent and highly selective inhibitors of selected heretofore therapeutically underexplored protein kinases, including CK1 inhibitors that form the basis of the CasInvent pipeline. Practically all projects in Prof. Paruch’s laboratory are being carried out in close collaboration with leading Czech and international biologist. Noteworthy is the collaboration with Prof. Lumír Krejčí of Masaryk University in the area of identification of new inhibitors of structure-specific nucleases, which resulted in the know-how that was exclusively licensed to the innovative biotech company Artios Pharma (Cambridge, UK) and recently also to the Big Pharma company Merck KGaA (Germany). Prof. Paruch has authored 44 scientific publications and has been granted 68 international patents.

Pavlína Janovská, Ph.D. is a researcher at the Department of Experimental Biology, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, where she earned her Ph.D. working in the laboratory of Prof. Vítězslav Bryja. Her research focuses on the signals governing the behaviour of white blood cells — how they communicate with other cells and with their microenvironment, and how those signals drive the onset and progression of leukaemias and lymphomas. In particular, her work has centred on the non-canonical Wnt signalling pathway and its key regulatory enzyme, casein kinase 1 (CK1). A landmark study she led, published in Blood in 2018, established CK1 as a therapeutic target in chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, demonstrating that CK1 inhibition significantly blocks microenvironmental interactions of CLL cells and slows disease progression in preclinical models Together with Prof. Kamil Paruch and Prof. Vítězslav Bryja, she received a Masaryk University innovation award for unique research into the inhibition of casein kinase 1, including the synthesis of new highly selective and patentable compounds — work that formed the scientific foundation of CasInvent Pharma. She was one of the founding contributors to CasInvent Pharma when it was established in 2020 as a spin-off of Masaryk University. As Head of Biology at CasInvent Pharma, she has continued to investigate the Wnt pathway and the therapeutic potential of CK1 inhibition across multiple cancer types, combining academic knowledge with industry development experience. She has co-authored 35 scientific publications, accumulating over 619 citations, with expertise centred on Wnt signalling and cancer biology. She has now been appointed Chief Scientific Officer of CasInvent Pharma.