Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic relapsing disorder of the gastrointestinal tract that is driven by misled host-microbial interplay. In the past years we and others have contributed to multi-omics analysis of inflammatory bowel disease, which has painted a multifaceted picture of this complex immune-mediated disorder. However, a thorough understanding of the molecular causations that lead to manifestation and result in pathological cytokine signalling is still lacking. Recent findings underscore a potential role for the host – microbial metabolite axis in establishing mucosal homeostasis. However, disturbances in specific metabolic pathways (e.g. tryptophan, short-chain fatty acids) can also contribute to disease pathogenesis of IBD. Our groups aims to integrate a focused metabolic understanding into multi-omics models to elucidate pathophysiological key features of immune-metabolic crosstalk in IBD. To that purpose our group combines longitudinal biosamples from IBD patients, mouse models of intestinal inflammation (genetic, chemical), intestinal organoid cultures (human/murine) and state of the art molecular cell biology to identify novel immune-metabolic principles that contribute to the pathophysiology of IBD.

Team Member:

Janina Ohndorf, Technician
Danielle Harris, PostDoc
Mhmd Oumari, PostDoc
Na-mi Kim, PostDoc

Xiang Hang, PhD student
Julia Kugler, PhD student
Guang Yang, PhD student

Mohamed Bakr, MD student 
Fabienne Bretschneider, MD student
Johanna Bornhäuser, MD student
Hanna Höper, MD student
Georg Laue, MD student
Eva Springer, MD student
Lina Welz, MD student
Felix Wottawa, MD student
Qicong Wu, MD student

The group is always interested in motivated MD student to conduct their MD thesis in basic and translational research.