Every year, thousands of patients are admitted to hospital with heart failure, only to watch their kidney function deteriorate within days. The reverse is equally true: chronic kidney disease quietly strains the heart until it gives out. This destructive relationship is called cardiorenal syndrome, and it remains one of the hardest problems in cardiovascular medicine to treat, because no human model system has existed to study both organs together.
Using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) derived from patients, you will grow beating cardiac microtissues and kidney organoids in a shared culture environment that allows the two tissues to interact, just as they do in the body. This human cardiorenal co-culture platform will be used to study how injury to one organ drives dysfunction in the other, with the specific disease context, whether hypertensive, diabetic, ischaemic, inflammatory, cardiotoxic, nephrotoxic, or septic, developed in conversation with the student based on their interests.
You will develop skills in stem cell culture, 3D microtissue and organoid generation, live imaging, and functional assays, working within a team that combines cardiac and kidney biology, omics, and translational medicine.
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