Speaker: Dr Aikaterini (Katerina) Gatsiou

Title: A cup of tea for understanding life: towards hacking the vascular code

Abstract:

We are as healthy as our blood vessels. Vascular endothelial cells are pillars of our blood vessel tree, present in almost all organs and contribute to nearly every disease. With the recent development of single cell technologies and genetics, by now we have developed an understanding about the blueprints of the vascular tree. However, we are in the dark in regards to installed programs underpinning the seamless operation of our blood vessels in health and disease. In the first part of the seminar, we will explore stress-specific programs controlling key functions of endothelial cells and their link to disease. The second part of the seminar will focus on the development and use of technologies of tomorrow which will help us uncover fundamental principles of blood vessel integrity and life granting us in this way unique insights into the development of precision medicine tools battling incurable diseases.

Bio:

Dr Aikaterini (Katerina) Gatsiou was born in Greece where she obtained an A4 degree (Ptychion) in Molecular Biology & Genetics at the Democritus University of Thrace. As a Scholar of the Hellenic Atherosclerosis Society and the European Union, she then pursued and obtained a Master of Science degree in Clinical Biochemistry and Immunochemistry-Microbial Biotechnology at the Hellenic Atherothrombosis Research Centre and the J.W Goethe University Frankfurt. Katerina was a doctoral Fellow of the LOEWE Center for Cell and Gene Therapy and earned her Ph.D. with honors in Biology from the Faculty of Life Sciences at the J.W Goethe University Frankfurt, under the supervision of Professor Stefanie Dimmeler. For her post-doctoral studies, Katerina joined the laboratory of Professor Konstantinos Stellos in Newcastle University, UK, as an instructor on RNA biology. Katerina is currently the head of a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council-funded junior research group at the Newcastle University Biosciences Institute working on dissecting the role of RNA nucleotide changes in fundamental biological processes. Her work has been awarded with multiple national and international prizes, including the Elaine W. Raines Early Career Investigator Award of the American Heart Association’s Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology council. Katerina is an elected member of the American Heart Association’s Genomic and Precision Medicine early career council and advocates for supporting early career researchers and particularly women in science.