Piotr Konieczny, Ph.D.

The Konieczny Lab studies how immune, epithelial stem, and endothelial cells interact to shape tissue health and disease. Using advanced genomic and imaging tools, including spatial transcriptomics, and combining basic, clinical, and translational approaches, we aim to develop new therapies for damage-repair disorders. Our research spans three main areas:

Tissue Repair & Regeneration – We investigate how epithelial stem and progenitor cells coordinate with immune and other tissue cells to restore homeostasis after injury. By mapping these cellular circuits, we seek strategies to enhance tissue repair and regeneration.

Chronic Inflammation – Barrier tissues like skin, lung, and gut are prone to chronic inflammation from injury, environment, or genetics. Inflammatory diseases often hijack wound-healing programs, leading to excessive growth, vascularization, innervation, and immune activation. We study these repair–inflammation links to uncover new therapeutic targets for damage-repair pathologies.

Cancer & Metastasis – Inflammation strongly influences epithelial cancers. While chronic inflammation’s role in tumorigenesis is well-studied, less is known about how acute inflammatory events “prime” epithelial stem cells and the microenvironment via lasting chromatin and transcriptional changes—a process we call inflammatory memory. We explore how such inflammatory memory shapes cancer progression and the metastatic niche.