Dr Katarzyna Szymanska

My primary interest is to understand the molecular mechanisms driving development of pathological phenotype of ciliopathies (rare congenital disorders affecting organs such as brain, kidney, eye and liver). I use CRISPR-Cas9 genetic engineering to model patients variants in stem cells to then differentiate them into kidney cells and organoids. Kidney organoids are then grown in an environment enabling cysts development, resembling ciliopathy patient's phenotype and therefore being a great disease model.

In my current post I use kidney organoids as a control model system to investigate molecular mechanisms underlying PRPF8-related retinopathy.