Jovana Aranđelović, PhD

Jovana Aranđelović was born in Belgrade on May 2, 1992. She is principal investigator (PI) of the project “Translational road to elucidate the effects of GLP-1 receptor agonist treatment on adipose tissue - brain axis function in cognitive processes in diabetes type 2 with concomitant obesity (CoD-GOAT)", which is funded by the Serbian Science Fund under the PROMIS call (2024-2026). After defending the doctoral dissertation on September 12, 2022, entitled “Bimodal modulation of alpha5 GABAA receptors in experimental model of Alzheimer's disease" under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Miroslav Savić, she carried out two short-term projects abroad (one related to the in vitro trafficking of GABAA receptors in neurons at the NOVA Medical School in Portugal, funded by FENS/IBRO (2023), and the second entitled "IT makes s(ci)ense", which dealt with the analysis of RNA sequencing results at the Institute of genetics and molecular and cellular biology (IGBMC) in France, funded by the French Embassy in Serbia (2022)).

Research interests: Young PI puzzled by cognitive dysfunction and mood changes in neurodegenerative diseases as well as in diseases that are risk factors for their development (such as metabolic diseases and stress-induced conditions), with a focus on GABAergic transmission, and drug discovery in this field.

She attended the 9th gymnasium "Mihailo Petrović Alas" (natural science and mathematics) and was an active member of the Research center "Petnica" (molecular biomedicine and chemistry). She graduated from the Faculty of pharmacy, University of Belgrade, study program pharmacy-medical biochemistry (2011-2016) with an average grade of 9.78 out of 10. Her master's thesis was “Effects of repeated applications of substances acting on α6 GABAA receptors in the rat model of trigeminal neuropathic pain" under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Miroslav Savić at the Department of Pharmacology. During her integrated academic studies, she worked on four student research papers on the Department of Physiology, Medical biochemistry and Pharmacology. She received a scholarship for the CEEPUS summer school for cancer in Slovenia (2016) and completed a paid internship in the Department of toxicology at the Medical university of Lodz in Poland (2016). In 2016, she enrolled in doctoral studies at the Faculty of pharmacy, University of Belgrade, in the Pharmacology module. She received scholarships Dositeja and those from the Ministry of education and sports of the Republic of Serbia during the integrated academic studies and/or doctoral studies. She completed an internship in the "Aqualab Plus" laboratory and passed the professional exam for medical biochemists at the Ministry of health of the Republic of Serbia in 2017.

As a PhD student and/or postdoctoral researcher, she worked on the following projects under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Miroslav Savić (2016-2024) at the Faculty of pharmacy, University of Belgrade:

• National project funded by Serbian Science Fund - Ideas: Neuroimmune aspects of mood, anxiety and cognitive effects of leads/drug candidates acting at GABAA and/or sigma-2 receptors: In vitro/in vivo delineation by nano- and hiPSCbased platforms (NanoCellEmoCog, 2022-2024)
• H2020 project (Innovative Medicines Initiative line) Neurotoxicity De-Risking in Preclinical Drug Discovery (NeuroDeRisk, contract number 821528; 2019-2022)
• Project funded by the Serbian Ministry of Science "Behavioral characterization of repeated administration of newly synthesized ligands selective for different GABAA receptor subtypes (contract number 175076, 2016–2020)

In 2021, she completed the one-year bioinformatics training program at the School of Computing (RAF) in Belgrade. During her doctoral studies, she completed couple of internships abroad and participated in numerous international conferences. As a DAAD scholarship holder, she attended the InterDAF German course in Leipzig, Germany (2017). As an Erasmus+ scholarship holder, she participated in the scientific summer school "Linear Algebra for Neuroscientists" at University of Radbaud, Netherlands. She attended the advanced Cajal training program "Aging cognition" at the School of neuroscience, University of Bordeaux, France (2021). She participated in the ECNP workshop in France in 2022, after being selected as one of the 100 best early career neuroscientists. As part of the Horizon project, she performed bioinformatics analysis of RNA sequencing results together with an international research team at Sanofi, France (2022). She has completed several online live training programs in bioinformatics, some of which were organized by the School for biological science, University of Cambridge, England (2021).

She is a member of the Serbian Society for Neuroscience and the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies, FENS.

She was an author or co-author of 6 articles in international journals and numerous abstracts at international conferences (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0837-7027).

She speaks English (C1) and German (B1).

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