Bilde av Szafranska, Karolina
Bilde av Szafranska, Karolina
Researcher Department of Medical Biology karolina.szafranska@uit.no +4777648359 +4746252062 You can find me here

Karolina Szafranska


Job description

Karolina is working as a researcher in the Vascular Biology Research Group. She has a multidisciplinary background stretching between Biology, Biophysics and Physics. Her current work focuses on Liver Sinusoidal Endothelial Cells (LSECs) and other hepatic cells and the application of different types of microscopy for studying cell morphology, especially liver fenestrations. Her research is trying to answer several important scientific questions:

  • Which drugs have positive/negative effects on liver cells?
  • How do drugs influence liver fenestrations?
  • What are the consequences of polypharmacy (admission of several different medicines) on liver cells?
  • What are the best ways to access cell morphology? 
  • How to efficiently isolate and culture primary liver cells? 

Karolina also supervises master students and is involved in the teaching of master courses for biomedicine students such as Advanced methods in experimental biomedicine.

 

Can be found in MH L8.233


  • Sabin Bhandari, Ingelin Kyrrestad Karlstrøm, Jaione Simon-Santamaria, Ruomei Li, Karolina Joanna Szafranska, Gianina Aurica Dumitriu et al.:
    Mouse liver sinusoidal endothelial cell responses to the glucocorticoid receptor agonist dexamethasone
    Frontiers in Pharmacology 2024 ARKIV / DOI
  • Hong Mao, Karolina Szafranska, Larissa Dorothea Kruse, Christopher Florian Holte, Deanna Wolfson, Balpreet Singh Ahluwalia et al.:
    Effect of caffeine and other xanthines on liver sinusoidal endothelial cell ultrastructure
    Scientific Reports 2023 ARKIV / DOI
  • Henning Ortkrass, Jasmin Schürstedt, Gerd Wiebusch, Karolina Joanna Szafranska, Peter Anthony McCourt, Thomas Rolf Huser :
    High-speed TIRF and 2D super-resolution structured illumination microscopy with a large field of view based on fiber optic components
    Optics Express 2023 ARKIV / DOI
  • Henning Ortkrass, Gerd Wiebusch, Jochen Linnenbrügger, Jasmin Schürstedt, Karolina Joanna Szafranska, Peter Anthony McCourt et al.:
    Grazing incidence to total internal reflection fluorescence structured illumination microscopy enabled by a prism telescope
    Optics Express 2023 ARKIV / DOI
  • Christopher Florian Holte, Karolina Joanna Szafranska, Larissa Dorothea Kruse, Jaione Simon-Santamaria, Ruomei Li, Dmitri Svistounov et al.:
    Highly oxidized albumin is cleared by liver sinusoidal endothelial cells via the receptors stabilin-1 and -2
    Scientific Reports 2023 ARKIV / DOI
  • Karolina Szafranska, Tanja Neuman, Zbigniew Baster, Zenon Rajfur, Oskar Szelest, Christopher Florian Holte et al.:
    From fixed-dried to wet-fixed to live-comparative super-resolution microscopy of liver sinusoidal endothelial cell fenestrations
    Nanophotonics 2022 ARKIV / DOI
  • Elise Anne van Os, Laura Cools, Nathalie Eysackers, Karolina Szafranska, Ayla Smout, Stefaan Verhulst et al.:
    Modelling fatty liver disease with mouse liver-derived multicellular spheroids
    Biomaterials 2022 ARKIV / DOI
  • Barlomiej Zapotoczny, Karolina Szafranska, Malgorzata Lekka, Balpreet Singh Ahluwalia, Peter Anthony McCourt :
    Tuning of Liver Sieve: The Interplay between Actin and Myosin Regulatory Light Chain Regulates Fenestration Size and Number in Murine Liver Sinusoidal Endothelial Cells
    International Journal of Molecular Sciences 2022 ARKIV / DOI
  • Ankit Butola, David Andre Coucheron, Karolina Szafranska, Azeem Ahmad, Hong Mao, Jean-Claude Tinguely et al.:
    Multimodal on-chip nanoscopy and quantitative phase imaging reveals the nanoscale morphology of liver sinusoidal endothelial cells
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) 2021 ARKIV / FULLTEKST / DOI
  • Karolina Szafranska, Larissa Dorothea Kruse, Christopher Florian Holte, Peter Anthony McCourt, Bartlomiej Zapotoczny :
    The wHole Story About Fenestrations in LSEC
    Frontiers in Physiology 2021 ARKIV / DOI
  • Christopher Florian Holte, Larissa Dorothea Kruse, Hong Mao, Karolina Szafranska, Peter Anthony McCourt :
    How do fenestrations work?
    2019

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    Research interests

     

    Currently working in a project focusing on the application of various types of super-resolution microscopy for studying fenestrations in liver sinusoidal endothelial cells. 

    Research methods:

    • isolation of primary liver cells
    • cell culture
    • immunostaining
    • microscopy - SEM, SIM, STED, STORM, AFM, confocal fluorescent microscopy
    • correlative microscopy techniques 
    • image analysis, machine learning (ImageJ/Fiji, Ilastik)

    Previous projects: MSCA ITN DeLIVER

    Teaching

    MBI-3012  Advanced methods in experimental biomedicine

    Supervision of master and bachelor students of Biomedicine




    CV

    Name: Karolina Joanna Szafranska

    Date of birth: 14.09.1993

    Nationality: Polish

    Academic background: 

    2016 B.Sc. in Biophysics (Medical Physics) Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland, supervisor Marek Szymoński, thesis: Investigation of the morphology of the liver sinusoidal endothelial cells (LSECs) by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and fluorescent microscopy

    2017 M.Sc. in Biophysics (Molecular Biophysics) Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland, supervisor Marek Szymoński, thesis: Structure of fenestrations and nanomechanical properties of liver sinusoidal endothelial cells altered by drugs and toxins

    2022 Ph.D. in Medical Biology, University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway, supervisor Peter McCourt, co-supervisor Karen Sørensen, thesis: Novel screening methods for nanoscale changes in liver cell fenestrations elicited by pharmaceuticals

    Research experience: 

    05.2022-present Researcher at Vascular Biology Research Group at University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway, in EU EIC Pathfinder project DELIVERy

    2018-2022 Early Stage Researcher at Vascular Biology Research Group at University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway, ERS in the MSCA ITN project DeLIVER

    08.2019-03.2020 Visiting research student at ANZAC Research Institute, University of Sydney, Australia and The ithree Institute, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia

    2015-2018 Intern at Laboratory of Experimental Pharmacology of Endothelium, Jagiellonian Centre for Experimental Therapeutics (JCET), Poland

    2012-2018 Student Researcher at Centre for Nanometer-Scale Science and Advanced Materials (Nanosam), Jagiellonian University, Poland