As the year wraps up, we want to share our third official CTGCT newsletter, summarizing a period of great growth, both in our team size and our scientific impact!
In the last six months, we have experienced a period of rapid personnel growth, with our team nearly doubling. Excitingly, new associates are joining early in 2026 and we are still searching for experienced post-docs and experts to join our development and GMP teams. Please visit our job openings page for more details.
On the construction front, exciting things are happening: the demolition has started here at Kemijski Inštitut, and we predict we will be set to break ground on our new facility next year!
Before diving deeper into events, achievements, and updates, we would like to extend our warmest wishes for the next year. We hope your holidays are bright and look forward to a 2026 full of breakthroughs and innovation alongside you.
News from the last 6 months
CTGCT Days 2025
From 15 to 17 September, we hosted our first CTGCT Days 2025 in beautiful Ljubljana. Combining the CTGCT conference on Cell Therapy with the Gene H conference on Gene Therapy, as well as two roundtables over three days. The event was a success, attracting more than 130 attendees from 40 institutions across 13 countries. We received positive feedback on the scientific talks and poster presentations, and we hope the networking opportunities fostered new partnerships and inspired fresh scientific ideas. You can read more about the event in this article.
Joint Statement: Academic ATMP Developers for Affordable Medicines
This October we joined a statement to preserve the Hospital Exemption in the revised EU pharmaceutical legislation. It was sent to the European Parliament and other EU institutions to emphasize that advancements in gene and cell therapies must be driven by patients’ needs, and not other interest. The statement was originally signed by 9 institutions around Europe. We invited other institutions in the Slovenian ecosystem to join us and many did. You can read more in this link.
CTGCT Science Talks Webinar Series
As part of our communications efforts we started a webinar series titled CTGCT Science Talks. So far, we have had 3 webinars, open to everyone, from our partners at the Kemijski inštitut – National Institute of Chemistry , UCL and UMC Utrecht . We will continue with this series until summer. Our next speaker, on January 12, will be Claudia Beltran Mestres from Dr. Amini’s group at BeCAT part of the Charite Medical Hospital Berlin. You can learn more about the webinar and register in this link, and don’t forget to follow us in our social networks to stay updated about future presentations.
CTGCT at the CREATIC Conference 2025
During 2025, members of the CTGCT team attended several scientific conferences, expert meetings and trainings; more details can be found on the webpage. In November, Prof. Mojca Benčina, head of CTGCT, was invited to the 2nd Central European Conference for Advanced Therapy and Immunotherapy in Brno. Prof. Benčina presented the latest developments and achievements of CTGCT and had the opportunity to exchange experiences with leading experts in the field. You can read more about it in this article.
You can learn more about all the events we attended and articles we published by checking our articles in the webpage.
What’s coming?
Save the Date: Gene H Conference, June 3 2026
GeneH, Excellence Hub for Advancing Innovation in Gene Therapy, joins partners from Slovenia and Portugal based on a quadruple helix model, connecting key stakeholders from research institutions, industry, healthcare professionals, regulatory bodies, and civil society. The next annual project meeting is planned in Ljubljana and will include an open conference on 3 June 2026. The conference will provide an opportunity to strengthen the gene therapy ecosystem in Slovenia and expand connections between Slovenian and Portuguese partners. Stay tuned for more news coming soon!
Open research results
In 2025 the CTGCT contributed in 8 publications, all of which are open access to maximize the reach of our scientific findings. You can see all the published papers where the CTGCT was involved in this link. To make this research more accessible, we write explanatory articles about them is a much less technical way. For example, here is an article where we use film editing as a metaphor to explain trans-splicing and how it can help treat CTNNB1 Syndrome.
List of published papers since our last newsletter:
Clustering of NLRP3 induced by membrane or protein scaffolds promotes inflammasome assembly. Boršić, E., Ramuta, T. Ž., Orehek, S., Kreft, M. E., Geyer, M., Jerala, R., & Hafner-Bratkovič, I. (2025). Nature Communications , 16(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-60277-4
Breakdown article: Unraveling the Mysteries of NLRP3: A Key Player in Inflammation – CTGCT
Genotypic, functional, and phenotypic characterization in CTNNB1 neurodevelopmental syndrome. Žakelj, N., Gosar, D., Miroševič, Š., Sanders, S. J., Ljungdahl, A., Kohani, S., Huang, S., Leong, L. I., An, Y., Teo, M. J., Moultrie, F., Jerala, R., Lainšček, D., Forstnerič, V., Sušjan, P., Lisowski, L., Perez-Iturralde, A., Mrak, J. O., Chan, H. Y. E., & Osredkar, D. (2025). Human Genetics and Genomics Advances, 6(4). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xhgg.2025.100483
RNA trans-splicing to rescue β-catenin: A novel approach for treating CTNNB1-Haploinsufficiency disorder. Maruna, M., Sušjan-Leite, P., Meško, M., Miroševič, Š., & Jerala, R. (2025). Molecular Therapy Nucleic Acids, 36(3). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.omtn.2025.102680
Breakdown article: From Film Editing to RNA Editing: How RNA Trans-splicing Could Treat CTNNB1 Syndrome – CTGCT
Gene therapy of rare diseases as a milestone in medicine – overview of the field and report on initial experiences in Slovenia. Grošelj, U., Kavčič, M., Drole Torkar, A., Kafol, J., Lainšček, D., Jerala, R., Sever, M., Zver, S., Serša, G., Čemažar, M., Strojan, P., Grošelj, A., Žerjav Tanšek, M., Miroševič, Š., Ivančan, S., Prelog, T., Gosar, D., Oražem Mrak, J., Mlinarič, M., … Osredkar, D. (2025). In Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases (Vol. 20, Issue 1). BioMed Central Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13023-025-03828-8
Job Openings
In 2025, our team grew to 16 people, and in 2026 we plan to hire additional staff, including postdoctoral researchers and GMP production experts with backgrounds in life sciences and/or experience in cell therapies and viral or non-viral vector preparation. If you or any of your colleagues are interested in joining CTGCT in its mission to translate research into therapies for cancer and rare diseases, keep an eye on our website or feel free to send your curriculum to ctgct@ki.si. We will probably post our next batch of open positions before the end of the month or early January 2025.
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Co-funded by the European Union, this project has received funding from Horizon Europe (grant agreement No. 101059842) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee (grant number 10069462). Views and opinions expressed are of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive