Marta Z. Pacia, Ph.D. habil.

Head of the SONATA Project, NCN
e-mail: marta.pacia@jcet.eu

Marta Pacia obtained her Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2017 at the Faculty of Chemistry of Jagiellonian University. Since 2013, she has been scientifically associated with the Jagiellonian Centre for Experimental Therapeutics (JCET), where she has been employed since 2017 as an assistant (as the PI of the SONATINA1 project, NCN), and since 2021 as an assistant professor (as the PI of the SONATA17 project, NCN).

In her scientific work, she focusses on defining spectroscopic and microscopic markers of dysfunction of vascular endothelium, looking for novel understanding of pathobiology of lipid bodies formation in endothelium and vascular wall. She uses an interdisciplinary and comprehensive experimental approach in her research, including Raman spectroscopy, fluorescence microscopy, electron microscopy, and atomic force microscopy, combined with the assessment of the functionality of blood vessels.

She is a laureate of the START 2019 programme of the Foundation for Polish Science and a laureate of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education scholarship for outstanding young scientists in 2018. In 2018, within the SONATINA1 project, she completed an internship at the Institute of Physiology II, University of Lübeck, Germany, during which she conducted research on nanomechanical changes in the inflamed endothelium. She was principal investigator of three projects awarded by the National Science Centre in Poland (Preludium4, Etiuda3, Sonatina1), and currently leads the SONATA17 project, entitled “Multimodal approach for a comprehensive assessment of (dys)functional endothelial phenotype in isolated blood vessels”, carried out in JCET between 2022 and 2025.

Selected recent publication

  • M. Z. Pacia (corresponding author), M. Sternak, L. Mateuszuk, M. Stojak, A. Kaczor, S. Chlopicki, Heterogeneity of chemical composition of lipid droplets in endothelial inflammation and apoptosis, BBA-Molecular Cell Research, 2020, 1867, 6, 1-11. doi.org/10.1016/j.bbamcr.2020.118681.
  • M. Z. Pacia (corresponding author), N. Chorazy, M. Sternak, B. Fels, M. Pacia, M. Kepczynski, K. Kusche-Vihrog, S. Chlopicki, Rac1 regulates lipid droplets formation, nanomechanical, and nanostructural changes induced by TNF in vascular endothelium in the isolated murine aorta, Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences, 2022, 79, 6, 317. doi.org/10.1007/s00018-022-04362-7.

More: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0391-2502