PhD RIJAVEC MATIJA, researcher

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2596-4952

Matija Rijavec is a Development and Research Associate at the University Clinic for Respiratory and Allergic Diseases Golnik and Assistant Professor of Immunology at the Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana. His professional training consisted of the Study of Microbiology (Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, 1998-2004) and Biomedicine (Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, 2004-2010). This period saw him awarded B.Sc. (2004) and Ph.D. (2010), for which he received the Krka prize. Matija Rijavec was promoted to the position of Assistant Professor of Immunology in 2015 at the Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana.

He serves as the Associate Editor of the Frontiers in Immunology, Frontiers in Microbiology, Biomolecules, Gene and Journal of Respiratory Research, and as Executive Editor of the Human Gene. Matija Rijavec is a co-chair of the Hereditary Angioedema Variant Curation Expert Panel (HAE VCEP), part of the Clinical Genome Resource (ClinGen).

Matija Rijavec is a head of a research project funded by the Slovenian research agency (J3-50114) and is actively involved in the project (J3-50110, J3-3072, J3-4516) and in the research programme of the University Clinic for Pulmonary and Allergic Diseases Golnik (P3-0360). He was also a head (J3-2532) and also participated (J3-3626, J3-2234 and J3-6787) in research projects funded by the Slovenian research agency and in SIGN – Slovenian Italian genetic network (Program of crossborder cooperation Slovenia-Italy).

He is involved in different fields of clinical research, mainly studying immunology and genetics of complex diseases, including allergy/anaphylaxis, hereditary angioedema, asthma, COPD, atopic dermatitis, sarcoidosis, cystic fibrosis, and alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency.

A great proportion of the research activities represent the use of different techniques in molecular biology to study DNA (sequencing, PCR, qPCR, MLPA, NGS, ddPCR), expression profiles of mRNA, miRNA (RT-qPCR, NGS, ddPCR), proteins (flow cytometry, ELISA) in various disease entities, in an attempt to decipher disease mechanisms and finding novel biomarkers for diagnosis and prognosis/prediction. His research is currently focused on hereditary angioedema, asthma, anaphylaxis mechanisms, genetics and pharmacogenetics, as evident from the summary of the latest publications in this field.