Susanna Kaisto

I am an advanced Doctoral researcher interested in developmental biology and especially organogenesis.

I have a MSc degree in Biology, Physiology with specialization on developmental and reproduction biology, from the University of Helsinki. I went on to do my doctoral studies in University of Oulu in Prof. Seppo Vainio's laboratory. I was the first doctoral researcher in Oulu accepted to the Joint PhD programme with Ulm University, Joint PhD Programme in Tissue Homeostasis: Development, Aging and Regeneration (TissueHome). In Ulm I have been working in the Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, under the supervision of Prof. Michael Kühl.

My research targets several fundamental and open issues in kidney development. I want to gain better understanding on how the vascularization of the kidney happens and what origin the kidney endothelial cells have and what their role is in this process. For this I have developed an improved CAM assay method for xenografting and vascularization of ex vivo embryonic kidneys. This models offers us several different novel approaches to address kidney development a by taking full use of the mouse generic technologies.

Another research interest is the cell communication in organogenesis and especially the role of Wnt signalling in kidney development. I am studying the function of Wnt5a in kidney development. I use knockout Wnt5a mice together with various in vitro models to investigate the effects of loss and gain of Wnt5a mediated signaling.