Professor Petr Kopáček is graduated in physical chemistry at Faculty of Sciences in the Charles University in Prague and received his Master degree in 1982. He began to work as a research assistant specialized on the bioanalytical methods at the Institute of Entomology of the Biological Centre in Czech Budejovice. In 1992, he spent half a year at the University of Uppsala in Sweeden in the Prof. Kenneth Soderhall’s laboratory working on the characterization of immune proteins from the crayfish which eventually created a basis of his PhD thesis defended in 1993. He has a PhD. in Biochemistry at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry in the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.
Petr spent one and half year as a postdoc at the Institute of Zoology in the Free University of Berlin working on the pro-phenoloxidase system of the wax moth. In 1996, he returned to Czech Budejovice and joined the tick-research group at the Institute of Parasitology. Science for the excellent results achieved in the project “The role of hemoglobin in tick metabolism and transmission of tick-borne pathogens”.
Since then, Petr is interested in the investigation of the tick innate immunity with a special focus on the tick complement-like system. The other research area studied in Petr’s lab stems from the fascinating phenomenon of the extreme gluttony of ticks. His team contributed to our current understanding of the blood digestive machinery and knowledge of tick adaptation to the excessive amounts of potentially toxic heme and iron originating from the blood diet. This research focus led to the discovery of a secreted ferritin 2 which still belongs among the most promising anti-tick vaccine candidates. In 2018, Prof. Kopacek received the Award from the President of the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR) in Biological & Agricultural
