Member of the National Science Policy Council
Associate professor of Pediatrics, Semmelweis University

Dr. Andrea Fekete is an associate professor of Pediatrics, at Semmelweis University. She obtained her PhD degree in 2004, about gender differences in renal ischemic damage. She spent two years in Germany and one year in the USA as a visiting professor. Upon returning home, her research was rewarded with the Talentum award.

First in 2011, and then again in 2021, she won the Lendület grant of the Hungarian Acadermy of Sciences. Her international research group of Hungarian, American, Vietnamese, Iranian and Indian researchers, which has now expanded to 15 people. Their main topic of interests is to describe the multiorgan complications caused by diabetes and to study new therapeutic approaches.

She won the "Vilma Hugonnai Memorial Medal" of Semmelweis University, the György Miklós Award of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the L'Oreal "Women for Science" award, the Academic Youth Award, and she was a Magyary and Bolyai scholarship recipients. Shee received the MTA QP Academic Excellence Award for her investigations about the causes of diabetes.

Her most important new discovery in recent years is the development of a new Sigma 1 receptor-stimulating active substance, which successfully inhibits the formation of tissue scarring in many organs in preclinical models. Their discovery is protected by several patents granted worldwide. She was awarded the Dénes Gábor prize in 2020 and the Ányos Jedlik prize in 2021 for her innovative research, and she also won the Semmelweis University Innovation Prize.

In 2016, she founded and currently leads the pharmaceutical research company SigmaDrugs. Based on their patent describing a hitherto unknown new target molecule as a drug development target in the treatment of fibrosis, they led a successful clinical phase II study in which moderate-severe COVID patients received fluvoxamine therapy. She is the scientific Secretary of the Hungarian Society of Nephrology, a member of ETT-TUKEB, a board member of Science Europe in Brussels and a President of the OTKA Clinical Jury.

In 2021, she completed herhabilitation at Semmelweis University, and in the same year she obtained a doctorate from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She has published more than 80 scientific papers, Hirsch index: 27, citations over 2,500. She speaks advanced English and German and basic Russian