Dr. Branka Zukić is a Full Research Proffesor at the IMGGE and Head of the Group for Molecular Biomedicine. She served two terms as Vice President of the Scientific Council of IMGGE and was a member of the Institute’s Ethics Committee for ten years, from its establishment.
Her research is focused on the molecular genetics and genomics of complex diseases, with particular emphasis on pharmacogenomics, pharmacotranscriptomics, and the application of personalized medicine in autoimmune diseases, hematological malignancies, solid tumors, and regenerative medicine. She has developed expertise in the identification and validation of molecular biomarkers of therapeutic response and adverse drug reactions. Through the analysis of patients’ genomic and transcriptomic profiles, she contributes to improving disease stratification, prognosis, and therapy selection.
In her work, she applies advanced molecular biology and bioinformatics approaches, including next-generation sequencing (NGS), gene expression analysis, pharmacogenomic analyses, liquid biopsy, and integrative interpretation of genomic data. She is also developing induced pluripotent stem cell model systems for the investigation of adverse drug reactions. The results of her research have been published in more than 70 scientific papers.
She was the PI of the successfully completed Horizon Europe PharmGenHUB project (2022–2025) and is currently a partner in the Horizon Europe InnoThyroGen project (2025–2028). She maintains successful collaborations with the pharmaceutical companies Roche and AstraZeneca.
She is also the coordinator of the course “Gene and Cell Therapy with Pharmacogenomics” within the postgraduate molecular biology studies at the Faculty of Biology, University of Belgrade, course coordinator in the Master Bioinformatics 4.0 program, and lecturer in specialist studies at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Belgrade.
She is particularly dedicated to the education of young researchers and students, as demonstrated by her mentorship of four successfully defended doctoral dissertations, as well as by her active engagement in the promotion and popularization of molecular genetics, genomics, and biomedicine.
