Jen Joslin is a Renal Trainee in South London and current British Heart Foundation Clinical Research Training Fellow. She is working towards her PhD at KCL under Dr Kate Bramham, Professor Claire Sharpe, and Professor Simon Satchell, exploring endothelial glycocalyx degradation in cardiac surgery-associated acute kidney injury.

While doing research, and especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, Jen has gained considerable experience working in Advanced Kidney Care.

PhD title: Assessment of endothelial glycocalyx dysfunction and impaired microcirculatory perfusion during cardiac surgery to improve prediction of post-operative acute kidney injury and understanding of pathophysiological mechanisms.

For her PhD, Jen has completed a clinical study demonstrating increased shedding of Syndecan-1, a core endothelial glycocalyx constituent, in patients undergoing cardiac surgery who go on to develop post-operative acute kidney injury. She is using sublingual incident dark field microscopy to explore intra-operative microvascular perfusion. In the lab Jen is working on assessing endothelial glycocalyx degradation in cultured cells (HUVECs and ciGEnCs) in response to serum from clinical study participants, and has used a focussed proteomics approach to explore potential differences between participants with high and low shedding.

PURE profile: https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/jennifer.joslin