The free-to-use telemedicine system developed by 77 Elektronika Kft. in Hungary is revolutionizing online remote medical services. The project, funded by the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund, aimed to personalise the treatment of patients with or at the early stages of diabetes. That’s why the Dcont® eNAPLÓ platform was created, where people with a Dcont® blood glucose meter can upload their measured data quickly and easily. These are supported by a number of graphs and statistics to help the patient’s orientation and the work of the medical specialist examining the data.

“Our grandchildren won’t even see it,” gloomily predicted the famous city-preservation TV program in the turn of the century. “We ourselves won’t even see it,” and this could well be the slogan of a modern small business in Sopron. But this is exceptionally good news: the biodegradable plastic bags they produce, made from biodegradable film, “disappear” in less than two months if composted properly. The development, supported by the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund, will do much to change the generation of plastic bags used in commerce and reduce the environmental pollution caused by packaging materials.

The new generation scaffolding system developed by Caadex Kft. is currently unrivalled on the market. Not only is it more stable and safer than other solutions, but its intelligent sensors can alert the user if the scaffold is not assembled correctly or if the structure needs maintenance or inspection. The “smart scaffolding” creates a much safer working environment in the construction industry than traditional solutions, and its costs are not significantly higher.

As a Hungarian enterprise, Gravity Research & Development Zrt. has been present on the global market for recommendation engines since 2010, helping service providers in a wide variety of industries both in Hungary and abroad. Under the brand names Yusp and Yuspify, they offer personalisation solutions based on cloud analytics to better understand and predict customer needs in providing online services. Funding from the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund has helped the company to further develop its product range with new technologies to make it more attractive and competitive on this rapidly changing market.

Precision oncology has become part of everyday cancer care. The molecular profile of a tumour can be accurately mapped and a wide range of targeted drugs are available for treatment. However, it is an enormous challenge to effectively link the two areas to ensure that therapy is truly personalised. The oncology decision-support system developed by Oncompass Medicine Hungary Kft. uses artificial intelligence to analyse genetic and clinical data, and then assigns the drugs and active substances that are expected to produce the best results in a given case.

In a breakthrough in the fight against the coronavirus epidemic, researchers from Pharmacoidea Kft., Szeged have unravelled the secret of the increased infectivity of the dreaded Delta variant, which triggered a new wave of epidemics in 2021. In the project funded by a HUF 350 million grant from the “Investment in the Future” programme and implemented in university-research institute-enterprise cooperation, Dr Tamás Letoha and his research team have successfully elucidated the mechanism of infection. This allows the development of molecularly targeted yet simple strategies to reduce the spread of newer variants and effectively treat the diseases they cause.

Zoltán Nusser, Széchenyi and Bolyai Prize winning neurobiologist and member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS) leads the Laboratory of Cellular Neurophysiology at the Institute of Experimental Medicine of HAS. His research was supported by a Momentum (Lendület) grant and an ERC Advanced Grant in the past five years. From 2018, the team continues its work with funding from the Frontline programme of the NRDI Office. His research focuses on the understanding of synaptic communication between nerve cells of the central nervous system.

Recent research indicates that inflammatory processes play an outstanding role in the development of diseases of the nervous system, which are increasingly present in developed societies, however, the underlying mechanisms have not been properly understood. Ádám Dénes, biologist, explained one of their research projects in the field of neuroimmunology, which have been granted funding from the NRDI Office’s Fund as part of the National Competitiveness and Excellence Programme.

Hungary’s highest-resolution electron microscope has been deployed at the Institute of Technical Physics and Materials Science of the HAS Centre for Energy Research, promising successful projects in discovery research and business RDI projects in materials science. The implementation was  financed under the Competitive Central Hungary Operational Programme (CCHOP/VEKOP).

Gravity R&D Inc develops online recommender systems. The Netflix Prize contest gave them the first reference, then they received research funding, among others the predecessor of the NRDI Fund. Their customers are 50% foreigners and 50% Hungarians, and no one can beat their algorithms on the market. They pretty much know what users want even if they visit the given website for the first time. They expect their revenues doubled in 2017.

At the end of 2017 four Hungarian researchers won the Consolidator Grant, one of the most prestigious discovery research grants, in the framework of the call announced by the European Research Council (ERC) for principal investigators leading independent research groups. One of them, Judit Makara, returned to Hungary from the USA with a Momentum fellowship grant, now she is head of the Laboratory of Neuronal Signalling at the Institute of Experimental Medicine of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS). The NRDI Office’s bridge funding also contributed to this success.

An international collaboration of scientists achieved a breakthrough in the therapeutic options for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), one of the most common types of leukemia in adults. We interviewed Dr. György Miklós Keserű, principal investigator of the research launched in 2015 with Hungarian participation and financed by the NRDI Office, about the background, significance and findings of the research, as well as about the chances of curing one of the worst forms of leukemia.

The threshold of adulthood is a critical period of life. It is no coincidence that this period is marked by an increase in the use of drugs, unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases and car accidents. However, adolescent risk-taking comes with great flexibility as well: brain plasticity makes this period of development the time of opportunities. This gave the idea to Professor Ilona Kovács, head of the Institute of Psychology of Pázmány Péter Catholic University, to study the development of the cerebral cortex across adolescence and its relationship with sleep with her research group. The results of the project funded from the NRDI Fund have relevance to pedagogy, medicine and also to everyday life.

According to recent findings, inflammatory processes play a significant role in the evolution of diseases of the nervous system that are becoming increasingly widespread in modern societies. However, the mechanisms involved are presently unclear. At the “Brain Research and Oncology” conference organised by the Hungarian Biochemical Society, Hungarian researchers gave an account of the outcomes of the Hungarian Brain Research Program and projects in the field of oncology, funded from the lately launched National Competitiveness and Excellence Programme of the NRDI Fund. Biologist Ádám Dénes presented his most recent research findings.

The selective waste disposal of empty plastic bottles of mineral water and soft drinks has been a practice for some years now, but little do we know about the fate of these flasks. Those working in the project granted funding from the NRDI Fund worked out a method already applied by industry, as well: by altering certain properties of plastic waste material they give it a chance for a new life in so far unknown forms.

In the course of the interaction between metal nanoparticles and light the electric field might as well be ehnanced by several hundredfold in the proximity of nanoparticles. The benefits of this phenomenon may include the manufacturing of even more sensitive sensors, the destruction of harmful cells or the increased efficiency of certain solar cells. The “Ultrafast Nanooptics Research Group” in the Wigner Research Centre for Physics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, supported by the NRDI Fund, has elaborated a method which helps to learn about and measure the limits of the enhancement of the electric field in the case of any metal nanostructure on a surface.

Back covers of plasma TV sets, egg trays, things made of foam-structured plastic. The selective collection of empty plastic bottles of mineral water and soft drinks has been a practice for some years now, but little do we know about the fate of these flasks. Participants in a project funded from the NRDI Fund worked out a method that is now applied also in industries: by altering certain properties of plastic waste material they give it a chance for a new life in so far unthinkable forms.

Neuroscientist László Acsády, winner of an ERC Advanced Grant, the most prestigious grant of the European Research Council fostering discovery research, has set the objective to explore the so far virtually unknown links between the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex – responsible for cognitive functions, movement coordination, speaking and in pathological cases also for epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease – and the thalamus. With the professor of the Institute of Experimental Medicine of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA KOKI) we discussed the directions of research in the forthcoming five years.

Key indicators of smoking or consumption of alcohol and other drugs show improving trends –the survey project performed by the Institute of Sociology and Social Policy of Corvinus University of Budapest concludes, when comparing the latest information available on domestic conditions with all the data collected over the past 20 years, thus putting changes in addiction among Hungarian youth into an international context.