Molecular Nephrology

Our laboratory is a part of the Nephrology pision in the Rabin Medical Center. Our research area involves clinical and basic studies of glomerular diseases with main interest in diabetic nephropathy, obesity-related glomerulopathy and recently also pediatric nephrotic syndrome. We study the expression of microRNA and mRNA in human kidneys and in urinary exosomes. The major methodology in our laboratory consists of extraction of RNA from FFPE human kidney biopsies using LCM for studies of genes expression involved in lipid metabolism, podocyte genes, fibrosis and parietal cells regeneration into podocyte. We work with human podocyte cell lines, as well as other kidney cell lines, studying the mechanism of podocyte injury and regeneration in diabetic nephropathy. We also use patient's biological samples for the isolation and characterization of urine and blood exosomes as a "liquid biopsies" for kidney disease.