Juliette de Klerk

Research

The prevalence of Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is rapidly increasing affecting numerous people worldwide. A major complication of T2D can be nephropathy. This is when diabetes can cause damage to your kidneys over a long period of time, making it harder to clear extra fluid and waste from your body. Diabetic kidney disease (DKD) develops in about 40% of patients who have diabetes. Increasing evidence shows that DKD is regulated not only by many classical signaling pathways but also by circulating non-coding RNA (ncRNAs). The role and mechanisms of ncRNAs, including microRNAs and long non-coding RNAs, in DKD remains unknown and this is the topic of my PhD research.

Curriculum vitae

I studied Biology and Medical Laboratory Research at the University of Applied Sciences in Leiden (Hogeschool Leiden). There I did two minors to further educate myself: Immunology and infectious disease. In 2020, I did my graduation internship at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) in Bilthoven (Dr. Richard Anthony). There I investigated a suitable inactivation method and DNA extraction for Oxford Nanopore sequencing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex. During this internship I got interested in the field of multiomics and especially data analysis of sequencing data. In July 2021, I started working as a research technician and data scientist in the type 2 diabetes group led by Leen ‘t Hart and the type 1 diabetes group led by Arnaud Zaldumbide. My work mainly focused on coding and non-coding RNAs in the blood and the relation with the progression of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D). As of April 2022, I started my PhD under supervision of Dr Roderick Slieker on a collaborative project with the group of Prof. Zonneveld and Dr. Roel Bijkerk (Nephrology). Here we want to investigate the role of circulating small non-coding RNA in diabetic kidney disease.