Adelheid Kratzer has worked during her PhD on nuclear receptors, especially liver X receptor, and its impact on atherosclerosis, especially on macrophages. Thereafter she changed her focus towards one of the risk factors of cardiovascular disease, namely smoking, specifically passive smoking. Theses studies led her interest towards immunology, inflammation and inflammatory signaling and back to cardiovascular research as atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease. Having started her second Postdoc in Prof. Ulf Landmessers research group at the Center for Molecular Cardiology in Zurich in July 2012 she started focusing on the differences in Caspase-1 recruiting inflammasomes, their activation and regulation in monocyte subgroups from stable and acute coronary artery diseases patients. Here, she also started looking into the impact of microRNA as well as high density lipoprotein (HDL) on the regulation and activation of these subgroups. In this respect, she also tried to set up a screening for miRNA and mRNA targets within the different monocyte subgroups using next generation sequencing technology with the support of the functional genomics center at the University of Zurich (FGCZ). In the future, she plans to investigate gender differences in this novel way of target search. Additionally, she is trying to decipher the impact of protease inhibitors on the pro- /anti-inflammatory effects of HDL and possible implications in the treatment of CAD. Finally, she is also working on a humanized mouse model in order to study the impact of lipoproteins on the formation of monocyte subgroups. She also has also successfully set up collaborations with companies, for whom we measure HDL-mediated NO release. Since October 2014 she is working as a postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Landmesser's group at the Charite Campus Benjamin Franklin in Berlin.