The Renal Research Group at UiB and its main collaborative institutions

Within the Renal Research Group, we have a core group under the direction of Professor Hans-Peter Marti, as the principal investigator (PI), and  Associate Professor Øystein Eikrem, MD, PhD.

Postdoctoral fellows: Lea Landolt, MD, PhD, Nazar Mohamed, BDS, MSc, PhD.

Researchers (former postdocs): Jessica Furriol, PhD, Tarig Osman, BDS PhD, and Omnia Shadad, BDS.

PhD students: Ole Petter Nordbø, Tony Chen, Eleni Skandalou and August Hoel.

Forskerlinje students: Even Koch, Mariell Rivedal and Sigrid Nakken.  

RRG members have extensive experience with the key methodology of all ongoing projects, including the proposed PhD theses. Examples are clinical epidemiology, statistics & bioinformatics, investigation of renal histology by stereology & automated image analyses, laser capture microdissection of nephron compartments of renal biopsies, next-generation sequencing of mRNA & miRNA, proteomics, CRISPR/Cas9 technology, cell culturing and interventional animal studies.

Respective laboratory space including animal facilities and all necessary apparatus is available in our institution at the University of Bergen. They are either located in the Laboratory Building at Haukeland University Hospital (e.g. Renal Laboratory on the 7th floor) or in the adjacent Building for Basic Biological Research (BBB) of the Department of Biomedicine.

The studies of the core group are funded mainly through the support of Helse Vest, the Research Council of Norway and four competitive international industry grants (Sanofi-Genzyme, Takeda-Shire, Amicus and Alexion) to Hans-Peter Marti. More info

The core group of Hans-Peter Marti is involved in three main projects:

1. Norwegian Study for Personalized and Data-based Management of Children and Adolescents with Chronic Kidney Disease (minimal change disease and focal segmental glomerulosclerosis). Research Council of Norway, 2023-2028
2. Patient-tailored management of hypertensive nephropathy through digital technologies. Helse Vest, 2020-2024.
3. Novel biomarkers and therapeutic targets in human and animal Fabry nephropathy as well as in human membranous nephropathy, open and ongoing.

We would be very happy indeed to welcome students from all over Norway to join these projects!

We foster an interdisciplinary, well-funded research environment that involves a spectrum of institutions in academia and industry.

The Norwegian Kidney Biopsy Registry (NKBR) at Helse Bergen:  NKBR provides Fabry nephropathy and membranous nephropathy samples.

Department of Clinical Science, at UiB: Gunnar Houge for CRISPR/Cas9 studies, and Nicolas Delaleu, PhD, for bioinformatic analyses of RNA sequencing data.

Biomedicine at UiB: Nils Halberg, PhD, for CRISPR/Cas9 studies.

Helse Stavanger: Terje Apeland, PhD, Nephrology, Stavanger University Hospital, for analyses of redox biomarkers.

NTNU and St. Olav University Hospital, Trondheim:  Stein Hallan and Marius Altern Øvrehus for hypertensive nephropathy analyses.

University of Bristol, Bristol, UK: Moin Saleem from pediatric nephrology for the NURTuRE biobank regarding MCD/FSGS biosamples.

Karolinska Institutet, Sweden: Annika Östman Wernerson, Maria Herthelius, Anna Witasp and Sigrid Lundberg from pediatric nephrology regarding MCD/FSGS biosamples.

University of Helsinki, Finland: Peter Horvath for single-cell podocyte sequencing in archival kidney biopsies, and Andreas Scherer for bioinformatic analyses.

University of Oslo (UiO): Trond Jenssen, PhD and Melinda Raki, PhD, from Rikshospitalet for Fabry and diabetic nephropathy studies.

University of Porto, Portugal: João Paulo Oliveira and his group for analyses of perioxidasin in chronic kidney disease.