Cardiovascular diseases, and thrombotic vascular occlusions in particular, are the leading cause of death worldwide. Current therapeutic approaches are insufficiently effective and also entail significant risks, such as bleeding. Recent findings reveal that thrombotic diseases are significantly influenced by the immune system. In particular, the interaction between neutrophil granulocytes and thrombocytes plays a decisive role in clot formation. So far, this aspect has mainly been studied in animal models; in humans, the mechanisms are unclear and there is a lack of clinically useful prognostic and diagnostic markers.

The funded project CAPITALISE - "DeCiphering plAtelet and neutroPhil phenotype and functIon in Thrombosis And vascuLar dISeasE" by PD Dr. med. Leo Nicolai aims to change this. Patients with pulmonary embolism, stroke and myocardial infarction will be included and comprehensive analyses of the function of thrombocytes, neutrophil granulocytes and their interaction will be carried out. In addition, state-of-the-art omics approaches will be used to better understand the phenotype of the cells in the respective diseases. From this, new prognostic and diagnostic markers as well as potential therapeutic target structures will be derived, which can then be further confirmed in animal models.