We are pleased to welcome Joanna Kalucka, Head of the Laboratory of Angiogenesis and Inflammation at the Department of Biomedicine at Aarhus University, to CRC 1454 – Metaflammation and Cellular Programming as a Mercator Fellow. 

Her fellowship is funded through the Global Minds Initiative of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). Starting next year, Joanna will join the CRC as one of twelve Mercator Fellows funded within the initiative. 

Her project, “Investigating endothelial-to-immunomodulatory transition in metaflammation,” will explore how vascular cells change their functional identity in response to combined metabolic and inflammatory signals. In particular, the project will investigate how endothelial cells acquire immunomodulatory properties and how this transition shapes communication between the vascular and immune systems during chronic metabolic inflammation. 

The project addresses a central question of CRC 1454: how metabolic perturbations induce persistent inflammatory cell states that contribute to chronic disease. At the same time, Joanna’s research expands the CRC’s focus on endothelial-immune cell interactions.

 

Read more about the Mercator Fellowship and the Global Minds Initiative: DFG – Global Minds Initiative

Press coverage: University of Bonn & University Hospital Bonn

Copyright header image: Lars Kruse, Aarhus University

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