The second PhD Student of the Month is Anna Redl who is currently in her second year of PhD, N094, in the thematic program of Immunology as a member of Georg Starys lab at the Department of Dermatology.
Her ongoing research is about cutaneous sarcoidosis, a rare inflammatory disease of currently unknown etiology belonging to the group of mustisystem granulomatous disorders. Key molecular pathways driving granuloma formation and maintenance still remain mostly elusive and clinical trial data about effective targeted therapy is limited. In the setting of a clinical trial she assesses the transriptomic signature of immune cells of sarcoidosis patients in blood and in affected skin to explore the pathomechanisms of granulomatous diseases. In addition, she investigates the efficacy and safety of mTOR-inhibition as a new targeted therapy in sarcoidosis, as mTOR was remarked unregulated in sarcoidal lesions correlating with disease progression and its inhibition showed improvement of symptoms in a murine sarcoidosis model.