Ashley Zehnder
Chief Executive Officer Fauna Bio
Seminars
Tuesday 17th March 2026
Translating Natural Models of Disease Resistance and Regeneration into Novel Therapeutic Modalities in Cardiorenal & Metabolic Disease
11:40 am
- How natural biology of hibernators mimic chronic/acute kidney injury (AKI) and observing how renal tissues recover function despite damage that occurs every two weeks over a 6 month hibernation cycle
- How spiny mice (Acomys) regenerate severely injured nephrons without fibrosis and what gene signatures / transcription-programs underlie that response
- Insights from camel kidney studies: how extreme dehydration followed by rapid rehydration modulates oxidative stress, apoptosis, expression of aquaporins and solute carrier (SLC) proteins, and preserves kidney cortical/medullary structure
- Strategies for leveraging organismal resilience to derive robust human kidney signatures, in parallel with programs in heart failure and obesity (e.g. with Eli Lilly), to identify novel therapeutic targets
Tuesday 17th March 2026
Panel Discussion: Blue Sky Thinking: What is the Roadmap for Designing Next Generation Kidney Organoids that Better Recapitulate Kidney Function & CKD Pathology?
12:10 pm
- How can we generate functional data to assess the function of different cell types in kidney organoids
- How can we recapitulate filtration in kidney organoids and proximal tubules that are immature and don’t do transport
- How can we engineer cells so that function better resembles kidney function
