Sumathi Ravi Raj

Sumathi's research emphasis has been on understanding the significant insights about the glomerular filtration barrier in health and diseases such as diabetes kidney disease (DKD) of Unknown origin. Diabetes affects more than 10% of the world's population and is characterized by hyperglycemia either with the absence of insulin or its resepctor. Dr Anil's lab and others have shown that diabetes is presented with elevated Growth Hormone, a characteristic feature observed in 30% of type 1 diabetes population. And employing human glomerular podocytes as a non canonical target of growth hormone sumathi intends to investigate the source of  calcium influx into podocytes, which eventually results in the compromised cytoskeletal architecture, ultimately manifesting in proteinuria.
She employs multidisciplinary approaches for understanding:

1) Investigate the intracellular distribution of calcium in podocytes of DKD and

2) Elucidate the role of calcium dynamics in mitochondrial biology of DKD.

She extensively utilizes cell and molecular biology tools, confocal microscopy, electrophysiology, genomics approaches and in vivo animal models for addressing the research problems.