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Profile
| Academic position | Full Professor |
|---|---|
| Research fields | Gastroenterology,Immunology |
| Keywords | tertiary lymphoid tissue, biliary liver injury, stromal cells |
Current contact address
| Country | Germany |
|---|---|
| City | Bonn |
| Institution | Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn |
| Institute | Universitätsklinikum Bonn (AöR), Institut für Experimentelle Immunologie |
Host during sponsorship
| Prof. Dr. Frank Lammert | Universitätsklinikum des Saarlandes, Klinik für Innere Medizin II, Universität des Saarlandes, Homburg |
|---|---|
| Start of initial sponsorship | 01/08/2012 |
Programme(s)
| 2012 | Sofja Kovalevskaja Award Programme |
|---|
Nominator's project description
| Each year about 170.000 patients in Europe die due to liver cirrhosis, the common end-stage of all chronic liver diseases, and the development of hepatocellular carcinoma is the fifth most frequently diagnosed cancer worldwide. The liver as largest abdominal organ of the human body serves multiple functions in metabolism and immune response, many of which have yet to be defined. As postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Veronika Lukacs-Kornek worked in the laboratory of Shannon Turley at Harvard Medical School where she has discovered a novel regulatory circuit operating between stromal cells and immune cells in lymphatic tissue. As recently appointed professor at Saarland University, she aims to understand the structure and the function of tertiary lymphoid structures in liver and to define the role of stromal cells for the pathogenesis of chronic immune-mediated and biliary liver diseases. This focus is clinically relevant because besides liver transplantation there are no specific treatment options for many chronic liver diseases such as primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC). Furthermore, the role of antigen presentation by stromal cells will be investigated not only in preclinical PSC models but during hepatocarcinogenesis in inflamed liver. Following this path opens novel aspects of liver immunology and should result in better understanding not only of liver functions but also the development and the progression of chronic liver diseases. |