Interview held with Dr. Elena Sánchez López, posted at the Leiden University’s website. Elena is doing her LEaDing Fellowship at the Department of Human Genetics of the Leiden University Medical Center until end December 2020.
The aim of her LEaDing Fellow’s project is to understand the mechanisms of polycystic kidney disease, a genetic disease which causes the development of large cysts in the kidneys. She mainly focuses on understanding how certain metabolites are altered in mouse models, in order to find the affected metabolic pathways. Elena is broadening her personal horizon at the same time. ‘My background lies in chemistry, working in the molecular biology field is something different. Not only am I broadening my scope, which I find very useful and interesting, but I am also bringing analytical chemistry knowledge and expertise to this research group embedded in the Human Genetics department. I am very grateful that I can also work closely together with the LUMC Nephrology department; they support me and give me access to patients data and urine samples, to correlate the data obtained in the mouse models to patients, for example. The whole interview can be read here: https://www.staff.universiteitleiden.nl/news/2020/08/like-don-quichot-you-have-to-keep-dreaming
