People

Ina Maria Schiessl, Assistant Professor


Ina is a pharmacist who dedicated her career to basic medical research of renal (patho-) physiology. Her signature research approach is serial intravital multiphoton microscopy (MPM) of the kidney; a powerful technique to study renal structure and function simultaneously and over several weeks in the same living animal.

More about Ina

During her predoctoral studies, she established intravital MPM of the kidney at the University of Regensburg, Germany, to unravel novel mechanisms of proteinuria, a hallmark of chronic kidney disease. By directly addressing the function and integrity of the renal glomerular filtration barrier in vivo, she postulated a novel transcellular pathway of plasma albumin along the glomerular filtration barrier and through the podocyte cell body (Schiessl et al JASN 2015).

During her postdoctoral training at the University of Regensburg, Germany and the University of Southern California, USA (supported by a fellowship by the German Research Foundation) she combined intravital imaging with a variety of other state-of-the-art-techniques to study novel mechanisms of renal tissue remodeling and repair of the renal tubule and the glomerulus. Thus, she identified a novel supportive role of renal interstitial cells in tubular regeneration (Schiessl et al JASN 2018) and investigated a novel endothelial progenitor cell population in the renal glomerulus (Desposito*, Schiessl* et al. JCI Insight.2021- *authors contributed equally).

Since October 2019, she holds a tenure-track assistant professorship at Aarhus University and leads the Laboratory of Renal Cell Remodeling and Regeneration. Supported by a 6-year Hallas Møller Emerging Investigator grant by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, a Start-Up Grant from AUFF and a project grant from the Agustinus Foundation, the group aims to decipher mechanisms of kidney injury and disease progression. 

Hanne Kidmose, Biomedical Laboratory Scientist


Education: Biomedical laboratory scientist, specialized in histology and cytology; Diploma of engineering in Biotechnology, Process Technology and Chemistry
Research Interest: Hanne is the heart of the lab. She loves science and provides critical support to all running projects in the lab.

Expertise: immunohistology, ex vivo histology, tissue clearing, animal surgery and handling, protein purification and enzymatic assays, Elisa, SDS-page/western blot, cell culture techniques, PCR,

Hanne Kidmose

Biomedical laboratory scientist

Anders Kristensen, Postdoc


Education: MSc (Sport Science), PhD (Public Health)
Research Interest: Anders studies myofibrobast dynamics and interactions with injured and non-injured tissue respectively to understand the role of fibrosis in disease progression.

Expertise: Intravital 2-photon imaging, tissue clearing, ex vivo histology, image processing, microsurgery

Freja Vigen Christiansen, Medical student


In her empirical bachelor project, Freja characterizes molecular expression patterns of a novel cell type in the kidney.

Sofie Kirchhoff-Jensen, PhD student


Education: Master in Biology
Research Interest: Sofie studied renal physiology in snakes in vivo during her master and bachelor projects. Now she aims to understand intercellular crosstalk between injured and uninjured renal tissue in mice exlpoiting novel disease models.

Expertise: animal handling, microsurgery, immunohistology, PCR, intravital 2-photon imaging


Alumni

Donato Sardella, PhD Student


Education: MSc (Biological Sciences)
Research Interest: Donato studies endothelial cell plasticity in acute and chronic kidney injury

Expertise: intravital 2-photon imaging, tissue clearing, bioimage analysis, development of streamlined analysis pathways.

Luca Bordoni, Postdoc


Education: MSc (Molecular Biology), PhD (Biomedicine).
Luca is now working for the Glia Lab at Oslo University. He keeps on working with with intravital micrscopy and now studies neurofunction.

Eva Vonbrunn, Visiting PhD Student


Education: MSc (Biochemistry)
Research Expertise: Complement system and renal ischemia reperfusion injury, Immunohistology, In-situ Hybridization, Multiplex Gene Expression Analysis, Cell culture 

Layla Pohl, Erasmus Student


Education: Medical doctor
Research Expertise: Endothelial cell remodeling, in vivo 2-photon microscopy, Immunohistology, genotyping, ex vivo 2 photon microscopy