András Váradi - Biography#

Dr. Váradi established himself as the head of the one of the leading laboratories in ABC protein research, especially in basic biochemistry of these type of transporters. His research group has been organized in the Institute of Enzymology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1989 focusing on the molecular mechanism of active transport protein. They started to investigate the molecular mechanism of human multidrug ABC-transporter (eg. MDR1 multidrug resistance protein or P-glycoprotein) and to study the membrane topology and functional domains of the second multidrug transporter, MRP1/ABCC1. In 2001 he initiated a project to study the function of ABCC6 protein; mutations in ABCC6 gene are associated with two genetic calcification disorders, PXE and GACI. They expressed the protein, the very first time, and demonstrated its ATP-dependent transport activity and showed that loss of activity is the cause of disease in the case of certain mutants. They published the first study on the transcriptional regulation of the human ABCC6 gene, and determined the corresponding signal transduction pathway. He is active in developing various animal models (mouse and zebrafish) to investigate missense disease-associated mutations of ABCC6. A.V. was invited speaker on the FEBS Special Meetings on ABC Proteins, Innsbruck (Austria) in 2006 and in 2008 and on the Gordon Research Conference “Elastin and Elastic Fibers” in 2005. He is the organizer of the bi-annual special meeting on the molecular background of soft tissue calcification in Budapest since 2007 and co-organizer of the alternating bi-annual PXE International Research Meeting in Bethesda (USA).