{"id":42964,"date":"2024-10-22T11:51:47","date_gmt":"2024-10-22T09:51:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/?p=42964"},"modified":"2024-10-22T11:51:47","modified_gmt":"2024-10-22T09:51:47","slug":"dr-akos-koller-receives-one-of-the-most-prestigious-awards-of-the-american-physiological-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/2024\/10\/dr-akos-koller-receives-one-of-the-most-prestigious-awards-of-the-american-physiological-society\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. \u00c1kos Koller receives one of the most prestigious awards of the American Physiological Society"},"content":{"rendered":"
Named after Carl J. Wiggers, the founder of the Cardiovascular Section of the American Physiological Society, the annual award is given to a single researcher who has made significant discoveries, is a pioneer in the field, and has inspired the wider professional community. In 2024, Dr. \u00c1kos Koller, Professor at Semmelweis University, was honored with the award – which he will receive following his talk at next year\u2019s summit in Baltimore – in recognition of his decades of research and groundbreaking work on the functioning of the heart, skeletal muscles, and cerebral microcirculation.<\/div>\n

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I have spent most of my career working on the function of microvessels, which make up about 80-90 percent of the blood circulation. In the last 10 years I have concentrated mainly on the specificities of the cerebral circulation, said Dr. \u00c1kos Koller, Head of the Microcirculation Laboratory of the Institute of Translational Medicine, Professor at the Faculty of Health Sciences (ETK), former Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 2019, his research achievements earned him the Malpighi Award of the European Society for Microcirculation, while his research and teaching work was recognized with the Albert Szent-Gy\u00f6rgyi Medical Award in 2021. Last spring he received the Eugene M. Landis Research Award from the American Microcirculatory Society.<\/p>\n

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The prize he has just received, named after Carl J. Wiggers, the founder of the Cardiovascular Section of the American Physiological Society, will be presented to him in spring 2025 at the society\u2019s annual American Physiology Summit in Baltimore, USA.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cIt can be seen as a kind of merit award, which is a reward for the scientific achievements of my career and the achievements of my students. Having students, I feel, is a vindication of your work, because you have people to carry on your achievements. And of course, it is important to have students because they make you work even harder,\u201d said the professor, who is still actively involved in university talent management, especially in doctoral and TDK (Students\u2019 Scientific Association) programs.<\/p>\n

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The microcirculation: A parallel venule with branches (top, dark purple) and an arteriole (clinging to it at the bottom, light purple) are visible. You can also see the nerves (yellow) entangling the muscle tissue. The discerning eye can see, among other things, that 1) the diameter of the venule is several times that of the arteriole (because the pressure in them is lower or higher, respectively), 2) the arteriole has a higher oxygen tension (lighter in color) than the venules, 3) oxygen can be exchanged between the arteriole and the venule, which is important because at rest the tissue does not need much oxygen, so the circulation saves it and returns it to the systemic circulation, 4) the diameter of the microvessels is also regulated by nerves. Photo by Dr. Gabriella D\u00f6rnyei and Dr. \u00c1kos Koller<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The discovery and verification of the role of shear stress in the regulation of microvascular circulation is considered one of his greatest scientific achievements. That is, the experimental demonstration that it is not only the magnitude of the pressure that regulates the circulation, but also the speed of the flow, and that the resulting force on the vessel wall – i.e. shear stress, or, in simple terms, friction – also plays a major role in the amount of circulatory energy lost in small and microvessels, which may put more strain on the heart. Another important discovery of his was that cerebral microvessels behave in exactly the opposite way to the small vessels of the heart. Because of the closed skull, the blood vessels cannot widen much, so they tend to contract when the flow increases, and provide the necessary blood flow by increasing the flow rate. \u201cImpairment of this function may play a role in traumatic brain injury, migraine, hypertonia, diabetes, and preeclampsia, which also sets the direction for my research. We are currently researching the latter at the Institute of Translational Medicine led by Dr. Zolt\u00e1n Beny\u00f3,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

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In recent years, he has also turned his interest from basic research to clinical research. In this context, he said:<\/p>\n

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I have a desire to research in humans what we have discovered in animal tests.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Therefore, together – among others – with Dr. R\u00f3bert Debreczeni and his group (Department of Neurology, Semmelweis University), they are using transcranial Doppler to study changes in cerebral blood flow in humans in various diseases. In a decade-long collaboration with the New York Medical College, he and his fellow researchers are investigating the consequences of damage to the glycocalyx layer (composed of lipopolysaccharides) that is located on the inner surface of blood vessels, on the exterior of the endothelium, such as increased fluid and protein efflux leading to edema. To reduce this, they have developed a potential new therapeutic option<\/a> using liposomes to restore the structure and function of the glycocalyx.<\/p>\n

He is proud that for more than 20 years he has organized his research, including animal models, in such a way as to take into account the differences in the functioning of the male and female microcirculation. This year, the American Physiological Society took the initiative by proposing that researchers in different disciplines should publish research results only if they have conducted experiments with female animals, Dr. \u00c1kos Koller said. He added that this was important because treatment guidelines for certain diseases were often tailored to healthy men aged 25, and doctors had to adjust the treatment and medication of patients of different ages and sexes accordingly.<\/p>\n

Melinda Katalin Kiss
\nTranslation: Dr. Bal\u00e1zs Csizmadia
\nPhotos by Bogl\u00e1rka Zellei – Semmelweis University
\nIllustration by Dr. Gabriella D\u00f6rnyei, Dr. \u00c1kos Koller – Semmelweis University<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The prize will be presented to him in spring 2025 at the society\u2019s annual summit in Baltimore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":102369,"featured_media":42970,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,286],"tags":[38],"class_list":["post-42964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","category-x-nyitolap","tag-awards"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/102369"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42964"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42971,"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42964\/revisions\/42971"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semmelweis.hu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}