Masaryk University
Brno, CZ
Founded in 1983, RECETOX is an independent department of Masaryk University’s Faculty of Science. RECETOX is engaged in research and education in the fields of environmental and health. The main activities comprise of monitoring toxic compounds in the environment, various products and human tissues, and evaluating the risks they pose, as well as their associated toxicological and ecotoxicological health effects; developing new sampling and analytical methods; developing new chemical tools and methodologies, biotechnologies and software tools. RECETOX is equipped to rapidly respond to new challenges concerning environmental contamination monitoring and exposure of the population to toxic compounds and their mixtures, and propose preventive and legislative measures, and offer appropriate interventions for chemicals management.
RECETOX works closely with various industrial partners to safeguard human health and ecosystems from the effects of toxic compounds,. Furthermore, through hosting of the National Center for Toxic Compounds, and the Stockholm Convention Regional Center (SCRC) for capacity building and transfer of technology, RECETOX supports countries in Europe and Africa, as well as international institutions in the region.
RECETOX’s Research Infrastructure, is a centralized facility for the implementation of interdisciplinary research projects, and is divided into individual core facilities that analyse a wide range of anthropogenic natural substances and toxins in environmental or biological matrices, conduct long-term environmental and population studies, and develop sophisticated software tools for management, analysis, interpretation, and visualization of data.
RECETOX provides multidisciplinary education in bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree programs in the fields of environmental health, mathematical biology, and biomedicine.
Role in the project
The role of RECETOX will be to investigate gut microbiome in biological samples from population studies CELSPAC in relation to exposure factors which have a potential to influence immune system and its development. DNA from 800 samples collected at specific time-points in infancy will be extracted and subsequently analysed.
Research groups involved in this project: Microbiome Analytical Laboratories, Trace Analytical Laboratories, Biomarker Analytical Laboratories, Integrative Bioinformatics and Biostatistics, Exposure and Health Risk Assessment and Bioanalytical Toxicology.
Engaging in WP1, WP2, and WP5, RECETOX contributes expertise across various domains. In WP1 (tasks 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.5, 1.6), RECETOX collaborates in assessing health effects associated with exposure to EDC mixtures across different life stages. In WP2 (tasks 2.1, 2.2, 2.3), RECETOX employs cutting-edge in silico, in vitro, and alternative toxicity tools to identify chemical mixtures of concern for endocrine disruption and immunotoxicity-related adverse outcomes. In WP5 (tasks 5.2, 5.3, 5.4), RECETOX delves into the intricate relationship between immune-mediated effects of EDCs and human health outcomes, investigating associations of EDC exposure with inflammatory immune markers.
Team
Jana Klánová
Jana Klánová is a professor of environmental chemistry and the director of RECETOX. She has vast research experience in the field of environmental and health the impacts of toxic substances on external and internal environments, products, and food. Using chemical, biological, and mathematical approaches, and new technologies, she combines data from long-term environmental monitoring and human biomonitoring programs with results of laboratory experiments and mathematical models.
In the past decade, she has led numerous European Structural Fund projects, as well as European framework program projects. She has published more than 180 scientific articles (WoS), with more than 4000 citations, and an h-index of 36, but is also active in translating scientific knowledge into legislation and practical applications.
Furthermore, Prof. Klánová is the guarantor of the Master’s degree program in Environment and Health at Masaryk University, regularly lectures to students of the Faculty of Science and Medicine and actively participates in European partnerships for the education of young scientists. She has also established research and educational cooperation with several leading international universities.