Phone: (044) 253 5710; 256 2048; fax: (044) 253 6458;
e-mail: center@serv.biph.kiev.ua

The main purpose of setting up the International Center of Molecular Physiology was furthering fundamental research in molecular physiology, which would incorporate the international experience. The foundation of the Center was aimed at facilitating the participation of Ukrainian physiologists in international collaboration, at new opportunities for Ukrainian science to gain prestige abroad. It also was a good opportunity for young researchers to work in Ukraine.

In the years of its existence, the Center has become a research and training institution, where young scientists, post graduate and university students gain experience and work jointly with their more experienced colleagues.

The principal lines of its activities are:

1. Research into excitable tissues physiology, using advanced molecular and biological methods, namely:

– investigating molecular mechanisms of nerve cell excitation;

– studying the processes of intercellular and intracellular information transfer;

– investigating evolution mechanisms of pathological processes at the molecular level and searching for the ways to correct them.

2. Organization of international congresses, schools, meetings covering high-relevance molecular physiology problems.

3. Coordination of Ukrainian and international senior staff work under joint research programs.

4. Training of research personnel (a post-graduate and doctor’s degree course).

The single-synapse method worked out at the Center enables one to use neuroretinoprotectors for cell protection under pathologic processes due to ischemia and for preventing uncontrolled glutamate overshoot. Also studied are molecular mechanisms of modulating synapse transmission in hippocampus under normal and pathophysiological conditions. Molecular and biophysical properties of human cloned ionic channels are studied under the target NAS program ‘Physiological, biochemical, molecular and genetic fundamentals of live systems functioning and developing principles to control them’.