Biochemist Jan Konvalinka: I hate us being called a “very good East European institute”
Regular media appearances made biochemist Jan Konvalinka a well-known figure in Czechia during the Covid crisis, a period he calls the pinnacle of his professional life. A one-time vice rector at Prague’s Charles University, he is today director of the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Czech Academy of Sciences – and spearheaded its establishment of an outpost in Boston this year. Just last week Professor Konvalinka announced that his IOCB, in conjunction with others, was waiving licensing fees for HIV drugs for relatively poor countries.
You are the head of the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry, your brother is today the head of the National Technical Agency and your sister is a doctor. Did you come from a family with really high expectations?
“I come from a family of coal miners and railway workers in northern Bohemia, which is actually quite a rundown place, a very industrial part of the country, close to Litvínov, which is an ice hockey place, by the way.
“We are the first generation with university degrees in the family. Most of my relatives were hardworking people, working either in industry or on the railways.
“My father made it to an accountant in a coalmine, so he was a self-made man.
“But I’m not complaining; I should say that our parents really struggled to give us the best education that they possibly could. That was always the most important thing for them – that the kids would have a good education.
“Question number one was, How was school? And, What about your exams.
“So that was of utmost importance for them.”
What initially led you to science, and specifically to biochemistry?
“That’s actually interesting, and complicated. I was interested in many things and I really wanted to be a historian, specifically an Egyptologist. I loved Egyptology.
“You might know that in Czechia Egyptology is actually a very traditional thing, a very successful branch of research.
“I read books on ancient Egypt as a little boy and I wanted to do that.
“But it took me quite a long time to realise that in order to be able to do so I would have to study at the Faculty of Arts at Charles University, during the communist regime.
“It was a highly ideologically oriented school, where Marxism-Leninism was subject number one.
“I somehow decided that I did not want to do it – and that was actually the choice of many people of my age, to hide somewhere from the communist regime.”
Science was relatively neutral, I guess?
“Exactly. Chemistry was something the Communists didn’t understand and wouldn’t play with, ideologically.
“I liked biology. I didn’t particularly like chemistry.
“Chemistry was something the Communists didn’t understand and wouldn’t play with, ideologically.”
“But there are these things called Olympiads, which in Europe, and specifically Central Europe, are highly popular and by the way an extremely successful thing – students are dong projects and compete and it’s a great source of talented kids for universities and then for academia.
“I was able to score well in the chemistry Olympiad and actually I won the national biology Olympiad, so I decided, OK, this is probably the thing to do.
“But it was like a rational choice. It wasn’t really something where I really wanted to do it. I must admit it wasn’t quite a passion – passion would be ancient Egypt.”
When you graduated what were first working on? What was your first area of research?
“Hormones. Peptide hormones. I studied biochemistry but my diploma work, and the thing I really did with my hands in a laboratory, was peptide synthesis, or organic chemistry, specifically peptide hormones.
“Again, there is a huge, successful history and tradition in peptide hormones [in Czechia]. Some of the first peptides made on this planet were made in Dejvice, in the very institute I am talking from now.
“They were made by Josef Ridinger, by the way a Royal Airforce Fighter during World War II. Together with du Vigneaud, he was the first person who was able to make peptides.
“He did not get a Nobel Prize, as opposed to du Vigneaud, but he established a school that still in the ‘70s and ‘80s was first class.
“It’s difficult to convey now, but for someone behind the Iron Curtain, living in a country where everything was mediocre and it was difficult to get good shoes [laughs] and people were waiting in line for months and months cars… suddenly you were in a lab and you competed with guys in Harvard and Shanghai.
“Living in a country where everything was mediocre and… suddenly you were in a lab and you competed with guys in Harvard and Shanghai.”
“You were on the same level as them and you communicated with them, though not physically, because it wasn’t easy at that time.”
I wanted to ask you about a predecessor of yours at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry, Antonín Holý. What was he like at the personal level? I’ve seen you describe him as an “annoying genius”.
“Yes. There is a theatre play about his discovery and himself. You probably know Dejvické divadlo, which is arguably the best theatre in the country.
“This play [Elegance molekuly/The Elegance of the Molecule] actually won the title of best play of the year.
“It’s amusing, it’s touching, it’s emotional, it’s funny – and Antonín Holý is actually portrayed very, very correctly as an annoying, strange, almost autistic, not very friendly person.
“He was a genius and I would say he was extremely, in a non-Czech way, result-oriented and going to extremes to make things happen, to get things done – a very American attitude: let’s finish it, let’s do it, let’s be the best.
“On the personal level he wasn’t very friendly, he was – I’m afraid to say so – to some extent paranoiac. He was afraid of competition, he was slightly egoistic, so he wasn’t the most pleasant person to be around.
“Antonín Holý wasn’t the most pleasant person to be around. But he was an excellent scientist and he did amazing, amazing things.”
“But he was an excellent scientist and he did amazing, amazing things.
“But this is a view from a much younger colleague who was not in his inner circle. People from his inner circle would report about him as a very friendly and helpful and kind person.”
Well he certainly did get things done. He made great breakthroughs in the field of drugs used to treat people with AIDS. I have to say I’ve got only a vague sense of what he achieved – how significant were his achievements in the context of Czech science, or even global science?
“He was an amazing scientist even if we don’t regard his compounds, his drugs.
“He was a very, very good chemist working on nucleotides and nucleosides, which are the building blocks of DNA.
“Again, there were predecessors: there was a whole school of those chemicals founded by the founding father of this institute, František Šorm, who must have been a genius – I never met him.
“He really started this peptide chemistry and he personally started nucleotide chemistry as well. That was very novel, because at that time nobody even dreamt about the possibility of making genes.
“He was already a visionary, starting with chemistry on making small oligonucleotides and small genes.
“Holý was working in that area and was a very, very good chemist. He took the opportunity of meeting Erik De Clercq from Belgium and doing things in a part of medicine and chemistry that were really defining the field.
“His chemistry was very, very strong – I wouldn’t say Nobel Prize level, but very, very strong and exceedingly successful.
“But teaming with Erik De Clercq, a doctor from Leuven, Belgium who is still alive, and later with John Martin, who established Gilead Sciences, was key to the success.
“He was the cornerstone of that holy trinity, the chemist making the compound that eventually made it to the clinic.
“And his drugs are still the most successful anti-HIV drugs that there are and very powerful anti-HBV drugs at the same time.”
Right about now people are remembering the emergence of Covid-19 five years ago, in 2019. Given your line of work, did you find it exciting from the professional point of view to observe the pandemic?
“It’s cynical to say so, but yes, I did. It was the probably the peak of my professional life, let me tell you. I hope so, because I don’t want to see anything similar [laughs]. But yes, it was.
“You might know that we wrote a popular book on viruses 12 years ago, with my colleague Professor [Ladislav] Machala, who is an MD, called Viruses for the 21st Century. We prophetically did a chapter on coronaviruses and suggested the SARS 1 epidemic in 2003 was just a trial epidemic.
“No-one called it SARS 1 at that time. It’s something similar to world wars – no-one called World War I ‘World War I’ until there was World War II.
“So coronavirus 1 came and we were afraid that it was just a trial and that a real epidemic would come – and unfortunately it did.
“For me it was a very hectic and intense time, partly in terms of research, because, particularly in my group, we were working day and night to develop diagnostic methods.
“And we had to develop everything from scratch, because by that time suddenly the world stopped. It was impossible to get anything, not only from South Korea or Japan but even from Germany or France.
“So we had to do everything using our own resources that we had here in Czechia, or even here in Dejvice. So we did everything.
“And on top of that, it’s difficult but possible to do things that would work in your lab – it’s something that we are used to.
“But we had to work out things that would not only work here in our lab but would also work anywhere else – and in the setting of a hospital it would work 10,000 times a day, and it would work on an instrument that we don’t even know.
“And you needed protocols that would be so robust that doctors or even nurses, you know, somewhere in Moravia would be able to use them and to them and to test potentially Covid-positive people.
“And we succeeded, we did it. In several weeks we were able to put forward a diagnostic kit for Covid that worked. And in that particular time it was a game-saver.”
You were frequently in the media at the time as the kind of voice of science. What kind of response did you get personally from Covid sceptics, who were a certain section of society who seemed to mobilise during that period?
“It was quite a dynamic situation. The first month I got only positive responses.
“It was actually fantastic; I felt like back in 1989, when people got together and helped each other and were enthusiastic and really trying to find ingenious ways how to cope with the problems. It was really a remarkable time.
“It changed later on. People became tired and suspicious and paranoiac.
“The first month [during Covid] I got only positive responses. I felt like back in 1989.”
“I still believe that the majority of responses I am getting and I was getting were positive.
“But I got hundreds of anonymous hate mails, which is OK as far as I am concerned but my wife and my daughters also some of them as well and that’s something I had trouble coping with.
“There were some threats even to my family. Many of my colleagues in the West actually got police protection. I was offered it as well, but I refused.”
The Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry opened a lab in Boston, in the US, in October. What was the background to that move, which I guess is unprecedented for a Czech scientific institution?
“Not quite, there is another scientific institution that opened a lab overseas, which is a biological centre in České Budějovice, and it’s in Papua New Guinea.
“So we decided to be even more adventurous than our colleagues in České Budějovice and went for the banks of the Charles River in Boston, Massachusetts.
“Actually, it’s a not a new idea. The idea came maybe eight years ago and there were quite advanced plans for an American outpost of the IOCB, but the original plans were for California, San Diego.
“I hope I can say this now, but they were plans together with the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego and with John Martin, personally, the CEO of Gilead Sciences. The idea was that it was going to be an institute of translational research.
“John Martin unfortunately died and we had to change our plans and now there was an opportunity to do things in Boston.
“I made a kind of adventurous step by hiring David Sabatini, two years ago I believe, and he got the chance to get a very generous donation from a philanthropist in New York, Bill Ackman, for his lab in the US.
“And the IOCB became the recipient of this donation and we use this money to run David Sabatini’s lab in Boston. We hired the space and we are paying for the rent, and we plan to have an additional two or three more groups in there, probably.
“That’s the current situation. The lab is already running and we had a grand opening, which was a very successful and very pleasant social event.
“The reason of course is to be at the very heart of biomedicine and the bio industry in the world, which Massachusetts, and Boston specifically, clearly is. To be close to venture capitalists, to be close to the methodology, to be close to the best minds that there are.”
One article on the opening in Boston had the headline “We want to win a Nobel Prize”. You didn’t say that directly, but how high are your ambitions?
“I’m actually quite bitter about that, because there was a long discussion with a journalist and he said, Someone told me that you are doing it only because you want to have the Nobel Prize.
“I immediately answered, Well of course we want the Nobel Prize, who wouldn’t? But, and the ‘but’ was the response, this is not why we are doing it.
“And of course it ended up as the headline of the interview. You know those journalists, Ian – and I’m really interested in what will be the title of this interview [laughs]. I hope it’s not going to be ‘We want the Nobel Prize’.
“I hope the title of this interview is not going to be ‘We want the Nobel Prize’.”
“But let me tell you why we did it. If you ask me, and now I’m being very honest, I really want to step out of this situation of being this ‘very good, post-communist East European institute’. I hate it.
“I hate being a ‘very good East European institute’ – we are not Eastern Europe, for hell’s sake! We are 200 kilometres west of Vienna and we should be compared to our colleagues in Heidelberg, in Leibnitz, in Dresden or in Vienna.
“And we should be better than or as good as they are, because there is no reason why we shouldn’t.
“But we are still viewed like, OK, quite good for a post-communist country. Hmm!
“That’s my personal, very emotional motivation for doing that. But there are very pragmatic reasons for doing it as well, and I just mentioned them.”
Well, I think that’s my headline right there, what you just said. But moving on, what area in biochemistry would you most like to be involved in achieving success in, or even what area would you like to see some breakthrough in?
“For me, it’s the molecular aspects of immunology right now. This is something that really excites me and we are working on that.
“Listeners might know that some of the major successes in anti-cancer development are connected to our better understanding of the working of the immune system, and using the immune system against cancer cells.
“First, that’s very specific. Second, if it’s done properly it doesn’t have a negative effect. And in some cases you can cure cancer; it’s not just that you prolong the life of the patient, but you really cure the disease and the patient could live, you know, happily ever after.
“That’s a real breakthrough and I believe that it’s the way to go. So that’s something really inspiring for my lab and for my colleagues.
“For the Institute, I think we are best at the interface between biology and chemistry, and biological chemistry is still the way to go for us.
“I am really excited about some progress of our colleagues in anti-cancer drugs, and I’m fascinated by neurobiology, I must admit. It’s something we touch only, it’s not a main focus of what we are doing but I think there is huge promise in this area.
“And some application of artificial intelligence, which is something everyone is talking about, but we have one or two groups that are really, really on the forefront of this effort. Again, that’s highly promising.”
Only this week, so the middle of December 2024, you tweeted that the IOCB Prague, together with the Rega Institute in Leuven and Gilead Science in the US, “surrenders its licensing fees for the HIV drugs invented in Prague or Leuven for 136 low- and middle Christmas. Merry Christmas to all.” What inspired that move?
“Gilead Sciences, one should say, and its activity running for 10 years already. I knew John Martin personally and he was a good man.
“People these days hate CEOs of pharmaceutical companies and they are viewed as monsters. Let me tell you, I know a number of politicians and I know a number of heads of pharmaceutical companies and the latter are typically nicer people [laughs].
“John was trying to do his best to help people. One has to understand that these people have to make a profit – if they don’t make a profit, there will be no new drugs.
“People hate CEOs of pharmaceutical companies and they are viewed as monsters. I lived half my life in a system where people tried to do things without making a profit – it does not work.”
“Let me tell you, I lived half of my life in a system where people tried to do things without making a profit – it does not work.
“So if you want to develop new drugs you need someone to make some money out of it.
“But then comes what to do with the money, and that was the idea of John Martin, to find a way how to increase access to anti-HIV drugs.
“And he did it in, I believe, a very correct way. In the beginning the idea was simply to sell the drugs for free to Sub-Saharan Africa and other countries.
“But it didn’t work, because you need logistics, you need to convince people that they should take the drug – that even if it’s free it still works [laughs]. And that’s not trivial, by the way.
“You have to work against the re-export of those drugs to the United States or Canada.
“At the end of the day the way Gilead uses it – and we and our colleagues in Leuven are working with them – is that there is a license to an Indian company that uses tenofovir alafenamide drugs in a generic format.
“They make it for profit, but very cheaply, and they send it to these access countries, which is these 136 countries in the world, not quite free but for a very, very cheap price, which allows the logistics to be built, doctors to be paid, health insurance companies to be interested, and patients to get access to the drugs.
“So these days more than 80 percent of people in need do have access to anti-HIV drugs, which is fantastic achievement. I’m very proud that we are part of it.”
