Witold Kilarski did his master's with a specialization in molecular biology at the Jagiellonian University in Poland and continued his postgrad studies in Par Gerwins and Lena Claesson-Welsh's Vascular Biology Group at the Uppsala University, where he was awarded a PhD in pathology. His first postdoc was completed within two years and eight publications at the University of Bordeaux in the Angiogenesis Lab of Andreas Bikfalvi. Later, he continued at EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland) in the Melody Swartz Laboratory of Lymphatic and Cancer Bioengineering. In 2013, the lab moved to the University of Chicago, where, as senior researcher, Witold was initially focused on the organization of the new lab and wrapping up EPFL projects and previous collaborations.
The main focus of Witold's work after the PhD is the physiology underlying remodeling of blood and lymphatic vessels in tumors and during wound healing. I demonstrated a new mode of post-developmental vessel growth and developed new in vivo assays on chicken chorioallantoic membrane (CAM). Later, I performed RNA profiling and proteome analysis of normal and pathological blood endothelium of the embryo. To open the possibility for visualization of various extracellular matrix components (e.g. basement membranes, transient fibrin or tenascin C deposits) in any fluorescent imaging technique, including classic epifluorescence, confocal or multi-photon microscopy, I developed an intravital staining and imaging protocols. We have applied this imaging to phenomena as diverse as early stages of filaria infection, measurement of stimulated blood vessels leakiness, and interactions between metastatic cancer cells, cancer associated fibroblasts and immune cells. More recently, I described a new anti-hemostatic function of lymphatic collecting vessels (unpublished results), which can be engaged in blocking the drainage of antigen and thus generate reversible subcutaneous immune privileged sites that can accept subdermal allografts without systemic immunosuppression. I plan to exploit the translational potential of this methodology for protection of endocrine allografts from immune response.