Mascha Koenen joins HI-TAC as Junior Group Leader
We are very pleased to welcome Dr. Mascha Koenen as a Junior Group Leader at the Helmholtz Institute for Translational AngioCardioScience (HI-TAC) – an external branch of the Max Delbrück Center located at Heidelberg University campus in Mannheim and Heidelberg. After postdoctoral work at Rockefeller University in New York, Koenen has returned to Germany to establish the Laboratory of Tissue Dynamics and Organ Crosstalk at HI-TAC starting June, 1 2026.
“Mascha brings exactly the combination of expertise we want to build here: outstanding science, deep mechanistic thinking, and a genuinely collaborative spirit,” says Dr. Karina Yaniv, Scientific Director of Systemic AngioCardioScience at HI-TAC. “Her work connects metabolism, vascular biology, inflammation, and organ crosstalk in a way that aligns perfectly with HI-TAC’s vision.”
Koenen will investigate how different types of adipose tissue influence cardiovascular health. For example, it has long been known that obesity is strongly associated with cardiovascular disease and diabetes – but not in everyone, says Koenen. One important factor is the distribution and type of fat, such as subcutaneous body fat verses visceral fat.
“I would like to understand how different types of adipose tissue contribute to disease. Is immune cell composition the same? Is the vasculature different? And does this explain why specific types of adipose tissue are associated with secondary medical conditions and other types are not?”
Significance of cellular cross-talk
Koenen began her scientific career as a doctoral student at Ulm University in Germany studying how immune cells communicate. She was interested in arthritis and found that for steroid treatment to be effective, it is essential that macrophages – a type of immune cell – interact with cells that make up the lining of joints. That work sparked her broader interest in cellular crosstalk.
As a postdoctoral researcher, she moved to Rockefeller University where she studied how macrophages regulate adipose tissue remodeling and other obesity-associated diseases. Adipose tissue remodeling is the process by which fat tissue alters its physical structure, cellular composition, and metabolic function to adapt to the body’s energy needs. She discovered that the type of fat and how it communicates with the vasculature — rather than with immune cells — plays a critical role in obesity-associated high-blood pressure.
Her lab at Rockefeller was also involved in research on thermogenic fat – a specialized type of body fat that burns stored energy and nutrients to generate heat. Studies in humans suggest that this fat has a cardioprotective effect.
To understand the mechanism better, she created mouse models and found that when thermogenic fat, also called brown fat, around blood vessels was replaced with white fat, the vessels became stiff and the animals developed high blood pressure – independently of obesity or diabetes. She and her colleagues also identified an enzyme in white fat tissue that causes these symptoms. These findings strengthened her interest in understanding the molecular dynamics in different types of fat tissue and how they regulate overall health – and laid the foundation for the research she will now pursue at HI-TAC.
“I am confident that Mascha will establish an exciting and internationally visible research program,” Yaniv adds. “She will also help set the tone and standards for the kind of open, ambitious, and collaborative environment we want HI-TAC to become.”
Text: Gunjan Sinha
