Investigating the kidney: Morphogenesis to regeneration 
10 July 2012
3.30pm
Venue: Room 501.505, Level 5, Building 501, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, Grafton Campus
Contact info: Robyn McDonald
Contact email: r.mcdonald@auckland.ac.nz
Department of Molecular Medicine and Pathology seminar by Professor Melissa Little, Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland.
The incidence of chronic kidney disease is rising at 6-8% per annum across the globe driven by increasing rates of obesity and diabetes. However, organ transplantation or dialysis remain the only treatment options. The functional filtering unit of the kidney is the nephron. The adult human kidney contains 300,000 to 1.5 million nephrons, all of which are formed prior to birth from an embryonic nephron progenitor population not present after this time. Hence, the options for true regeneration in the kidney appear limited. In this seminar, I will present our systematic analysis of the molecular basis of mammalian kidney development, including characterisation of the nephron progenitor population, and show how this understanding of fundamental biology may be harnessed for the development of novel approaches to renal regeneration via stem cell directed differentiation and reprogramming.
