Joint Seminar from Kingsley Lam and Thorben Schlesinger
Speaker 1: Thorben Schlesinger (2nd Year NIHR BRC PhD Student)
Title: Identifying Targets for Treating HNF1B-associated Kidney Malformations using Human Stem Cell-derived Nephron Organoids
Abstract: Heterozygous mutations in HNF1B are the most common monogenic cause for dysplastic kidney malformations in children. Recently, we found that the kainate type glutamate receptor GRIK3, hitherto unstudied in the kidney, was significantly upregulated in HNF1B-mutant hPSC-derived nephron organoids. For this project, I am using lentiviral vectors encoding GRIK3-targetting shRNAs to restore normal GRIK3 expression in mutant nephron organoids to identify novel targets for treating HNF1B-associated kidney malformations.
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Speaker 2: Kingsley Lam, who is a PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Bill Newman. His research is funded by the BRC and focuses on stem cell and neuronal research.
Title and Abstract to be confirmed soon