A Wayne State University School of Medicine researcher has received a 2024 Early Career Investigator Award from the Histochemical Society.
Cristina Espinosa-Diez, Ph.D., assistant professor of Physiology and the Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics, will apply the honorarium and seed grant funding to her study, “Optimization Of Multiplex Fluorescent ISH For Cell-Specific Detection Of Long Non-Coding RNAs In Kidney Microvasculature.”
“We hope to optimize a Multiplex Fluorescent ISH protocol to identify specific isoforms of long-non-coding-RNAs in a cell-specific manner. This will enhance our understanding of the behavior of these epigenetic regulators in our in vivo model of chronic kidney disease progression,” said Dr. Espinosa-Diez, who joined the WSU faculty in October 2023. “By gaining this insight, we hope to be able to design targeted therapies to prevent microvascular dysfunction in chronic kidney disease.”
Chronic kidney disease is characterized by a progressive loss of kidney function, often leading to end-stage renal disease. One of the critical factors in the disease’s progression is renovascular rarefaction, which involves the loss of microvascular structures within the kidney, leading to chronic hypoxia and inflammation. Long non-coding RNAs, or lncRNAs, Dr. Espinosa-Diez explained, have emerged as crucial regulators of gene expression, influencing various cellular processes. But the specific roles of lncRNAs in kidney microvasculature and their contribution to chronic kidney disease progression remain largely unexplored.
Preliminary data from her research uncovered a novel lncRNA—CASC15—that exhibits reduced expression in response to the peptide Angiotensin, which is relevant for the development and progression of chronic kidney disease. The study seeks to combine lncRNA probes with probes specific to endothelial and smooth muscle cells to determine the relevance of CASC15 in kidney disease progression.
Dr. Espinosa-Diez received her doctoral degree from University Complutense, in Madrid, Spain, in 2015. She conducted post-doctoral research at Oregon Health and Science University in 2015, and was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Pittsburgh in 2019.
Her research interests lie in non-coding-RNA and in understanding how cancer therapies shape the epigenetic landscape of vascular cells, potentially giving rise to long-term vascular complications. Her lab’s main goals are to explore the response of long-non-coding RNAs to different anti-cancer agents and investigating these long-non-coding RNAs’ role in vascular remodeling during disease progression.