Hyunyun Kim’s bio
Hyunyun Kim is a Ph.D. student at the Université de Montréal. He completed a Bachelor’s of Science at Yeungnam University and a Master’s of Science degree at Pusan National University in South Korea. After completing his Master’s degree, he pursued his research activity at the medical research center of the Pusan National University Hospital (PNUH) and the Yeungnam University Medical Center (YUMC) as a research assistant. He then joined Dr. Hébert’s lab in 2019. His research interests are focused on the crosstalk and mechanisms of cell death and autophagy in acute kidney injury (AKI) induced by ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI).
Autophagy Inhibition Aggravates Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury-Induced Microvascular Injury
Hyunyun Kim, Shanshan Lan, Francis Migneault, Julie Turgeon, Imane Kaci, Annie Karakeussian Rimbaud, Amani Mahroug, Natacha Patey, Mélanie Dieudé, Marie-Josée Hébert
A kidney transplant is a surgery to place a healthy kidney into a person whose kidneys no longer function properly. Donor kidney undergoes poor nutrients and low oxygen during the surgery followed by kidney damage caused when blood supply returns to tissue. This is a common cause of kidney injury in transplants with over 20% of kidney transplanted patients impacted. Thus, it is important to understand how kidney injury develops during a transplant. We discovered that preventing cell death mechanism protects kidney blood vessels after surgery. However, the role of autophagy, which plays a vital role in the survival mechanism of blood vessels remains unclear. Here, we explore the role of autophagy in the response to kidney injury.
We induced kidney injury in mice to mimic a kidney transplant and used chloroquine, a drug used to prevent survival mechanism. We collected kidneys and blood to measure the activation of survival mechanism and kidney damage. We found that an injured kidney induces survival mechanism, which was blocked by the drug. The drug deteriorated kidney function and damage. We found that regulating the survival pathway might be a potential therapeutic strategy to insure blood vessel protection during a kidney transplant.