Gerecht Lab

We are slowly making the transition over to Bluesky - this account will still be active for the time being, but we hope that if you’re also active on Bluesky you’ll follow us there (gerechtlab.bsky) to stay in contact and keep up with what we’re working on! 🦋

Our latest work, led by Dr. Connor Amelung, explores the impact of in situ stiffening on vascular networks and found that stiffening reduced pericellular remodeling by endothelial cells. Our findings have implications in aging & fibrosis #scisky 🧪 advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.10…

We are excited to share our new study led by postdoc Jiyeon Song using mechanically tunable hydrogels, multimodal OCT, and deep learning for non-invasive, real-time tracking of granulation tissue formation and vascular remodeling during wound healing 🎉🧪 cell.com/cell-biomateri…

We are celebrating Dr. Connor Amelung's successful defense! Congratulations and we are so very proud. Excited to see all you accomplish in your next role, and we will miss you! 🧪🔬

Congratulations to Dr. Travis Brady on his fantastic defense!! We are so incredibly proud of him and his accomplishments and can't wait to see what he does next. 🧪🫀🥹

Snow days at Duke! 🧪☃️❄️

Our January Journal Club! We discussed the role of cystine in vascular growth and repair 🧪🫀 cell.com/cell-metabolis…

As we enter 2026, we are reflecting back on the past year and all we have achieved! It was a year filled with challenges but also immense growth and accomplishment by our trainees. Here's to a productive and fulfilling 2026 🥂🎉

Huge congratulations to postdoc Yaqing Huang who was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the American Heart Association! She will be studying persistent endothelial cell activation during fibrosis. We are so proud! 🧪🫀

Happy Holidays from the Gerecht Lab! Wishing everyone a safe and relaxing end of the year 🧪☃️

Congrats to postdoc Jenn for winning 1st place poster in Bladder Physiology at her first CAIRIBU conference!

Happy Fall from the Gerecht Lab! 🍁🧪

Happy Halloween!! The Gerecht Lab’s Louvre Heist Crew stole the show at this years’ BME Department Halloween party 🦺💎

Our very first Gerecht Lab Bakeoff was a huge success!! 🧁Congratulations to winner Makenzie who made delicious rice krispies! We had a fantastic variety of entries with lots of creativity on show

A full house for our October journal club! We discussed an organotypic atlas of human vascular cells 🧪🔬🫀 nature.com/articles/s4159…

Congratulations to PhD Candidate Parker Esswein for winning First Place Poster Award at the Bioengineered Tissue Systems & Models Meeting at Cold Spring Harbor! We are so proud 👏🧪

We are having a great time at the Bioengineered Tissue Systems & Models Meeting at Cold Spring Harbor! PhD candidate Emily Warren presented her work on endothelial cell and pericyte crosstalk. 🧪🔬 Thanks to @GVNlab , @naveedtavakol , & Dr. Maletic-Savatic for organizing!

🚨New Gerecht Lab Pub!🚨 Check out our latest work where we demonstrate that direct endothelial cell-pericyte contact in the retina downregulates VEGFR2 in endothelial cells, promoting barrier function 🧪 #angiogenesis #retina #scisky iovs.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?a…

Congratulations to our newest PhD Candidate, Marcos Negrete, who passed his prelim last week! He has made some incredible progress in his work on vascularized prostate cancer organoids 🧪🔬

We are welcoming two new undergraduate researchers this fall! Welcome to Carmen and Fernando 🧪🎉🔬 We are excited to see what they accomplish!

Congratulations to our postdoc Yaqing who was selected as a Duke Scholar in Molecular Medicine! This nine month training program will give her hands-on experiences and shadowing in the clinic. We're so excited to hear about what she learns and how she'll apply it to her research!