Ukrainian biologist Taras Oleksyk gets emotional remembering what one of his country’s snipers once told him. “If you come to the trenches, who am I going to fight for? Stay. I know how to kill people, but not to educate them. You do.”
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The researcher is at the head of the creation of Ukraine’s largest genetic database, which until now was a “a blank space on the map” in the field. The goal is to collect DNA samples from 20,000 Ukrainians, all harvested during the war. It will serve, for example, for the study genetic conditions of type one diabetes, a chronic disease of unknown causes that affects the pancreas, cause damage to other organs and even lead to death. The project has already amassed the DNA of 10,000 people, thanks to a collaboration with 80 doctors throughout the country, including some who work close to the war’s front lines, and who take samples every time patients come to them seeking medical attention and insulin treatment.
“It’s the country’s largest collection of samples of type one diabetes, DNA and complete genomes, and as far as we know, one of the largest in the world,” says Oleksyk. The scientist was visiting Madrid along with his colleagues Olga Oleksyk and Khrystyna Shchubelka in search of new collaborators at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.
Olga is Taras’s sister, an endocrinologist, legislator and health ambassador from Ukraine’s southwestern region of Transcarpathia. “In Ukraine, we have 25,000 amputees, not just soldiers, also many civilians, including children. We need support from Europe to obtain protheses and also, rehabilitation training for our doctors,” she explains. Her husband is a former history professor who is now fighting in the war. The number of wounded and of soldiers and civilians affected by post-traumatic stress disorder is overwhelming the region’s abilities, she says.
The capital of Transcarpathia is Uzhhorod. Separated from the rest of the country by the Carpathian mountains, it is the only Ukrainian city that has yet to be bombed by a single Russian missile, and has never been invaded.
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