UVA BIMS PhD student Ewelina Hejenkowska was featured in UVAHealth Children’s Monthly Matters, July edition for her research.
Here is the excerpt from their July publication:
Nephrology
We spotlight major advance from the laboratory of Dr. Agnes Swiatecka-Urban. Her team has grown human kidney organoids: three-dimensional clusters of living cells, only a few millimeters across, that self-organize in culture into miniature working models of a real kidney, reproducing many of the organ’s specialized structures and functions. These organoids are built from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), ordinary cells reprogrammed to an embryonic-like state from something as simple as a blood sample and then coaxed to become kidney tissue. Led by BIMS graduate student Ewelina Hejenkowska, the project uses these living models to investigate the mechanisms of nephrotic syndrome, a serious kidney disease in which the organ’s delicate filters leak large amounts of protein into the urine. The long-term goal is to generate organoids from the cells of individual patients, creating patient-specific “kidneys in a dish” that allow the team to study each person’s disease directly and work toward treatments tailored to that individual. It is a vivid example of how stem cell science is opening a path toward truly personalized care for kidney disease.
Ewelina is also the first author on an educational review on congenital and infantile nephrotic syndrome, published June 1 this year which can be found at this link:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00467-026-07407-2
Congratulations to Ewelina and the lab of Dr. Agnes Swiatecka-Urban on this major advance!