Vasso Koliaraki obtained her B.Sc. in Biology from the Faculty of Biology, University of Athens in 2003 and her Ph.D. from the Medical School, University of Athens in 2009. In 2004, she joined the Lab of Molecular Biology and Immunobiotechnology at the Hellenic Pasteur Institute and received a Ph.D. scholarship. Her doctoral work, under the supervision of Dr. Avgi Mamalaki, focused on the iron-regulatory hormone hepcidin, and in particular on the expression and characterization of hepcidin isoforms, the generation and characterization of specific polyclonal and monoclonal anti-hepcidin antibodies and the generation of an ELISA system for the detection of hepcidin in human samples. This work led to two first author publications (Koliaraki et al., Biochimie, 2008; Koliaraki et al., PlosOne, 2009), several co-authorships and a patent on the process for producing hepcidin (US Patent 8614068).  At the beginning of 2016 she was appointed Researcher C at BSRC “Alexander Fleming” and received an initial starting grant from the “Stavros Niarchos Foundation” for the duration of two years. Her future research plans aim to address the hypothesis that mesenchymal cells in the intestine can be divided in distinct subpopulations with diverse origin during development and different contribution and function in homeostasis and disease pathogenesis, such as inflammation, fibrosis and cancer  

Contribution and function in homeostasis and disease pathogenesis, such as inflammation, fibrosis and cancer treatment