2022
- Jen Peek passed her CDB qualifying exam and has advanced to PhD candidate!
- Justin’s abstract, “Induced nephron progenitor cells for cell therapy of ischemia/reperfusion kidney injury” and Julie's abstract “Extracellular vesicles from induced nephron progenitor cells reduce urinary NGAL in mice with ischemia/reperfusion kidney injury” were presented as posters at ASGCT 2022
- Lauren co-chaired the ASGCT 2022 session “Therapeutic RNA strategies” with Dr. Loree Heller
- The Woodard Lab was awarded a Pilot and Feasibility award from the Vanderbilt Diabetes Research and Training Center
- Lauren presented “Modeling kidney injury starting from iPSC: from podocytes to human kidney organoids” to SPRING/Vanderbilt Center for Stem Cell Biology
- The Woodard Lab was featured in VUMC Reporter on Accelerating Podocyte Production: https://news.vumc.org/2022/02/01/accelerating-podocyte-production/
2021
- Two provisional patents were filed (Inventors: Bejoy and Woodard)
- Lauren presented “Genome engineering of stem cells for kidney regeneration” to Vanderbilt Biomedical Engineering
- Julie presented two abstracts, “Evaluation of the effects of cell-free hemoglobin in human kidney organoids” and “An accelerated method of podocyte differentiation from human induced pluripotent stem cells for modeling diabetic nephropathy,” at the ASN Kidney Week annual meeting
- Lauren presented “Human kidney organoids to test regenerative cell and gene therapies for acute kidney injury” to (Re)Building a Kidney
- Julie presented the research “Reprogramming of urine-derived stem cells into human nephron progenitor-like cells” at the ISSCR annual meeting
- Julie received Meritorious Abstract Travel Award from ASGCT for the abstract “Urine-derived stem cells for treatment of acute kidney injury in mouse and human organoid models”
- Julie presented to SPRING
- Lauren co-chaired the oral abstract session at the ASGCT annual meeting, “Novel AAV Biology and Platform Technologies”
2020
- Lauren presented at ASN Kidney Week 2020, “Novel advances to regenerate kidneys, regrow or repair?”
- Julie presented “Incorporation of Urine-derived Stem Cells into Kidney Organoids Derived from Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells” at ASN Kidney Week
- The Woodard Lab was awarded a VA MERIT award beginning April
- Julie received a VICTR award of $10,000 for the research on Modeling Diabetic Nephropathy Using Podocytes
- Justin Farry joins the lab through the Biomedical Engineering graduate program
2019
- U.S. patent application “Genetically induced nephron progenitors” (inventors: Vanslambrouck, Woodard, Wilson, Little) was filed
- Lauren presented an education session “piggyBac transposons to cut and paste DNA,” co-chaired the session “Translating non-viral gene delivery to human therapeutics,” and received a Career Development Award at the ASGCT annual meeting
- Featured in the VUMC Reporter on Reprogramming Cells for Kidney Repair https://news.vumc.org/2019/03/14/reprogramming-cells-kidney-repair/
- Lauren presented work on TcBuster transposons at the Keystone Symposia “Genome engineering: from mechanisms to therapies” in Victoria, BC
- Lauren presented “Genome engineering of stem cells for kidney regeneration” to the fantastic Nephrology Division at the University of Alabama Birmingham.

Photo credit: Dr. Kelly Hyndman