Presentation of “Megagrant”

Presentation of “Megagrant” – a documentary novel by Elena Kokurina, was held in the Oval hall of Rudomino All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature on May 28.

The main character, professor Paolo Macchiarini, won the grant of Russian Federation for research on regeneration of organs and tissues, including transplantations of organs created by his unique method.

This novel tells a fascinating and dramatic story of a foreign scientist who faced a great number of problems and surprises, experienced success and disappointment, and finally learnt to survive and live in Russia. Everyday life of the Russian laboratory is shown on a background of development of the world regenerative medicine. Does the main character of the novel hurry over translating new technologies into clinic even if a human life depends on it? What happened to his first patients? Will he manage to achieve his main goal – creation of a heart – in conditions of Russian reality?

The novel was published by a publishing house “Boslen” and is the first novel from the new series “The pulse of time”. The story is happening here and now, and no one knows what the ending will be like, as well as in our life. 

Alongside with the author and publishers the characters of the novel also took part in the presentation – all the people, who joined hands working under this project during these years and formed a strong team of scientists from different fields of science:

Paolo Macchiarini, professor of regenerative surgery, Karolinska Institute (Sweden),

Andrey Redko, professor, vice-chancellor of the Kuban state medical university,

Vladimir Parshin, professor, head of the thoracic surgery department of the 1^st Moscow state medical university hospital,

Roman Deev, candidate of medical science, Research director of the Human stem cells institute, science editor of the novel,

Irma Sakhuria, candidate of biological science, director general of “Chembio”,

Timofey Grigoriev, candidate of physical-mathematical science, deputy head of the polymer materials laboratory RC “Kurchatov Institute”.

There were also many other guests – researchers, writers and journalists.

The ministry of education and science of the Russian Federation was represented by the head of Science and technology department S. V. Salikhov. He underlined the importance of popularization of “megagrant program”, especially if it is done in such an unusual way as a documentary novel.