Passion for proteins: Štěpánka Nedvědová on a quest to curb viral replication

With a willingness to tackle international challenges and some of the world’s most difficult molecules, Štěpánka Nedvědová’s profile sheds light on the slow, often invisible work behind scientific progress, where persistence matters as much as discovery. In this first instalment of Radio Prague International’s brand new edition of Science without Borders, this time brought to you from France, she goes deeper into what it is like to be a young, ambitious, and proud Czech scientist working abroad.

You describe yourself as a protein explorer and a biophysics enthusiast. What first drew you to the molecular world of proteins?

“I was always somehow interested in proteins. Other molecules didn't really appeal to me, so I always loved proteins. I started as a food analyst, and afterwards I switched. After my studies, I switched to biochemistry more, and there I started to work on structural biology and here the passion for proteins grew, and now I'm really a protein enthusiast, I would say. It doesn't matter what kind of proteins I work with; I love them all.”

Concerning your research, particularly, what does it focus on, and how would you explain to a non-professional what it is that you are studying and researching?

“I'm working on the respiratory syncytial virus, which is a virus that is deadly, killing a lot of people every year. And unfortunately, right now, we don't have any antiviral therapeutics. Mostly, we are focusing on RNA-dependent RNA polymerase, which is, let's say, the heart of the virus. It's the machine that is fabricating new viruses. So, for example, for vaccines, the common approach is to target those spike proteins or something at the surface of the virus. We are really interested in the replication. So we think that if we can block the replication, the problem can be solved.”

To what extent, or in what horizon of time, would you say that the research that you're currently doing could have therapeutic, real-life implications for treating viral diseases?

“Yeah, this is the tricky one. So, we found really nice molecules. But with drug discovery, the problem is more complex, because it's not only the clinical tests and so on. For the first steps of the research, the problem is: I have a lot of nice molecules, but how to deliver them? How to solubilize them? So for sure, we will file some patents out of this research. But this, in France, will take forever. I would love to tell you it will be in the next five years. Unfortunately, I don't think so. But I just hope that this work we've done will help to resolve this problem. Because it's really an emergent problem. We are always speaking about antibiotic resistance, and so on, but I think that the next pandemics will also be viral.”

You also mentioned earlier some administrative challenges with patenting and accompanying your research. Are there any technical challenges that you face when working with proteins?

“Yes. There are a lot of technical problems. Actually, I am always struggling with proteins. At least in my life and work, I've never worked with protein, which would be like - yes, I have the sequence, and it's expressed. Never. The problem with proteins is that you need to produce them in a living material. It's difficult to do it correctly, and usually, you are the first person expressing this protein, so there's no data about how to do it. The next struggle is that you can have it expressed, but you will not be able to purify it. So here you can spend years, and once you have it, it may not be stable. So you need to treat it with a very specific kind of condition, and you will have it for a day or a week. And I can tell you, honestly, I spent four years of my five-year PhD just expressing proteins.”

Now, of course, we talked about international environments, but you've also been very active within the Czech scientific community here in France. How strong is the Czech scientific presence here, and what does it mean to you to be a part of it?

“Firstly, I need to say that I'm very proud, and I'm always telling everybody that I'm Czech, not French, because at all the conferences I have these name tags with CNRS, or Paris, or Gif-sur-Yvette…. And I'm like, no, no, I'm not French. I'm a proud Czech from Prague. I didn't know that much about different Czechs working in science here in France. I met them quite recently at the first Czech meetup at the Czech embassy, and I learned that there are a lot of amazing guys doing really amazing work”.

Watch the video for the full interview

This interview was produced within a joint project by Radio Prague International, the Czech Centre in Paris, and the Czexpats in Science initiative. The Science Without Borders series with young successful Czech scientists working in various fields in France was recorded in Paris. It is a follow-up to the first series of ten interviews from Vienna.