Pavel Krejčí has won the Minister of Health Award
Minister of Health Vlastimil Válek honored scientific personalities for outstanding achievements in projects related to healthcare applied research and development at the Baroque Refectory of the Dominican Monastery in Prague. One of the ten awardees was Pavel Krejčí, head of the Cell Signaling research team at the International Clinical Research Center (ICRC) in Brno. He received the Minister of Health Award for Healthcare Research and Development for 2023 for the project “Development of an FGFR3 Inhibitor for the Treatment of Skeletal Dysplasia.”
In 2022, a total of 84 projects supported by the Ministry of Health were successfully completed in the field of healthcare research. The selection of the best among these projects was carried out by the Agency for Health Research of the Czech Republic based on predefined criteria. The expert evaluation panels of the Agency proposed a total of 18 projects for the Minister of Health Award for Healthcare Research and Development in 2023, with the results proving to be of the highest quality. The Scientific Council and the Presidency of the Agency for Health Research of the Czech Republic then selected 10 candidates for the awards.
Five project teams received the main Minister of Health Award for Healthcare Research and Development, and another five project teams received the Minister of Health’s Honorable Mention. Pavel Krejčí, a researcher leading the Cell Signaling team at the International Clinical Research Center, was one of the five recipients of the main award, which includes a financial reward of CZK 100,000.
“Czech healthcare research achieves a high level, even in international comparison. It is an immense honor for me to personally present the awards to the selected project leaders and thank them for their dedicated, demanding, responsible, and high-quality work,” said Minister of Health Vlastimil Válek.
“It is important to note that all eighteen research projects presented at the conference organized by our agency in early October achieved excellent results, with many of them having an immediate impact on healthcare. It is truly encouraging to see how biomedical research in the Czech Republic has dynamically developed in the last decade, and the quality of evaluated projects increases year by year. I believe that this trend will continue, and our agency will contribute to this success by fulfilling its main mission of supporting quality and innovative research and development in healthcare,” said Ondřej Slabý, Chairman of the Agency for Health Research of the Czech Republic. “I would like to sincerely congratulate all the awarded researchers, co-researchers, and their research teams for their achievements. They deserve great thanks for contributing to progress in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of various diseases, undoubtedly enhancing our competitiveness and strengthening the position of the Czech Republic in the international research space.”
