ERC Advanced Grant awarded to Professor Petr Cejka for the MISMATCH project

The Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB) has been awarded, thanks to the efforts of Prof. Petr Cejka, a prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant. The grant will be hosted by IRB in Bellinzona, affiliated with the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI).

ERC Advanced Grants are among the most competitive funding schemes in Europe and support outstanding established research leaders pursuing ambitious, curiosity-driven projects. This recognition highlights the international impact of Prof. Petr Cejka’s work and the excellence of his research program.

Petr Cejka and his team investigate the molecular mechanisms that preserve genome stability, with a particular focus on DNA repair, such as mismatch repair and homologous recombination. Their work addresses fundamental questions in biomedicine and has important implications for understanding how cells protect genetic information and how defects in these processes contribute to disease.

The ERC Advanced Grant will support MISMATCH, a five-year project entitled “Pathological and physiological roles of the MutLγ (MLH1-MLH3) nuclease: from harmful trinucleotide repeat expansions to promoting diversity in meiosis.” The project will investigate how MutLγ, a DNA-processing enzyme complex, can have strikingly different roles in human biology. On one hand, together with other mismatch repair factors, it contributes to the expansion of trinucleotide repeats, a process linked to more than 50 human disorders, including Huntington’s disease. On the other hand, MutLγ plays an essential physiological role in meiosis, where it helps generate crossover recombination events that promote genetic diversity and proper chromosome segregation.

Using state-of-the-art biochemical reconstitution and advanced single-molecule imaging, Cejka’s team will dissect how MutLγ and its co-factors recognize and process specific DNA structures. By clarifying these mechanisms, the project aims to advance our understanding of genome stability, repeat expansion diseases and meiotic recombination, while also opening new perspectives for future therapeutic strategies targeting Huntington’s disease and related disorders.

This is Prof. Cejka’s third ERC grant, following the ERC Consolidator Grant HRMECH and the ERC Advanced Grant BRCA INSIGHTS, further underscoring the sustained excellence and international recognition of his research programme.

Prof. Petr Cejka will also assume the role of Deputy Director of IRB staring on October 1, 2026.