Mina Yakoub has two good reasons to celebrate. He submitted his PhD Thesis in April and has been awarded an IRTG 1902 Postdoc Start Up Funding grant, which he started at the beginning of May. His PhD research investigating the effect of different diet components on the cardiovascular health was supervised by Dr. Johannes Stegbauer, Department of Experimental Nephrology, University Hospital of Düsseldorf. Short chain fatty acids, table salt (sodium intake) and dietary potassium were among the dietary components investigated in relation to their beneficial or detrimental effect on the cardiovascular system. Furthermore, new potential immune cell candidates, which take part in the salt mediated pathogenesis of aortic abdominal aneurysm, were identified.
The exchange phase of his IRTG 1902 doctoral research was spent in the Laboratory of Prof. Dr. Gorav Ailawadi, Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery Institute, University of Virginia, USA. This exchange enabled Mina to determine differences in the extent of the development of aortic aneurysms between different mouse strains.
In the next year Mina aims to confirm the pro-inflammatory effect of salt pretreatment on immune cell phenotype and vascular injury in a blood pressure independent mouse model of abdominal aortic aneurysms and investigate the immunomodulatory effect of lactobacillus murinus in abdominal aortic aneurysm. This work will form the basis for the next step in his research career. We look forward to some exciting results