Affiliation: Jasmin.Ballout@vetmed.uni-giessen.de

Dr. Jasmin Ballout studied veterinary medicine at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Germany. In 2019 she finished her doctoral thesis about neuro-immune interactions in the gastrointestinal tract in the context of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) at the Institute for Veterinary Physiology and Biochemistry, JLU Giessen. Currently, she is working as a Postdoc in the group of Professor Martin Diener at the same institute. She established a murine organoid model in the lab to study inflammatory processes at the intestinal epithelium as an alternative for animal enteritis models. Crucial aspects of this topic are the effects of proinflammatory cytokines on ion secretion and epithelial barrier focusing on functional studies like live imaging and electrophysiology. Cocultures of intestinal organoids with neuronal or immune cells will be the next step to elucidate the cell-cell interactions under inflammatory conditions in vitro. Further current research interests are purinergic and short-chain fatty acid signalling at the large intestine or Notch signalling in lung carcinoma cells. Since 2022, Dr Jasmin Ballout has been a veterinary specialist in physiology and is currently in further education to become a veterinary specialist in laboratory animal science.