Department of Medicine II (Division of Cardiology)
Position: Associate Professor
ORCID: 0000-0002-1282-9276
T +43 1 40400 73500
johann.wojta@meduniwien.ac.at
Atherosclerosis; Cardiovascular Diseases; Inflammation; Thrombosis
My group focuses on the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis with special emphasis on inflammatory activation patterns of cells involved in disease development and progression such as endothelial cells, smooth muscle cells, cardiac myocytes and fibroblasts, monocytes, macrophages, dendritic cells, T-cells and adipocytes. These cells are used in various in vitro models to study processes involved in the development and progression of atherosclerosis, such as inflammatory activation induced by particular cytokines, matrix degradation and remodelling by proteases and angiogenesis and neovascularization.
Ongoing projects include investigations on
Techniques, methods and infrastructure of the research group
Isolation, characterization and cultivation of human primary cells (endothelial cells and smooth muscle cells from various vascular beds, monocytes, macrophages, preadipocytes, adipocytes, cardiac myocytes and fibroblasts), subtype analysis of human monocytes and macrophages by FACS, adhesion assays to study leukocyte-endothelial interaction under static and flow conditions, access to human tissue (atherosclerotic plaques, heart tissue, adipose tissue), diagnostic and analytical tools (immunohistochemistry, RealTime-PCR, ELISA, Western Blot), Apo E-/- mice as model of atherosclerosis