Journal of Kidney

Biography

After graduation at Comenius University, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, specialization Biophysics and Chemical Physics (Master of Science - 1986), she started to work in the Medical Bionics Research Institute (1986-1991). At this institute she worked in the scientific group of prof. Rastislav Dzurik which dealt with the isolation and identification of uremic toxins. At the time she isolated and by high performance liquid chromatography determinated the inhibitor of glucose utilization pseudouridine, which is one of the uremic toxins. Furthermore, she studied the influence of pharmacological agents on the excretion of accumulated uremic toxins in patients with chronic kidney disease. In the years 1991-2003 she worked in the Institute of Preventive and Clinical Medicine, where she introduced 31P NMR spectroscopy investigation of free intracellular magnesium concentration and pH in skeletal muscle of humans. Furthermore she focused on the study of changes in concentration of free intracellular magnesium in uremic patients with essential hypertension and insulin resistance. Since 2003 she is working at the Slovak Medical University. Her major scientific activities are: determination of intracellular calcium, calcium and vitamin D metabolism and effects, pathophysiological mechanisms of altered cellular calcium homeostasis in nonexcitable cells in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD), low-grade inflammation in CKD, the functionality and the expression of purinergic P2X7 receptors. She is skilled in fluorescence methods using living cells: measurement of intracellular calcium concentration, cell calcium regulation and signaling by fluorescence spectroscopy, fluorescence and confocal microscopy, flow cytometry, immuno-fluorescence staining of some receptors in plasma membrane. On these methods, she cooperates closely with Department of Biophotonics of International Laser Centre in Bratislava. In 2008 she received Ph.D. in Biophysics, after defense of thesis ?The study of calcium signaling in human peripheral blood mononuclear cells? at Comenius University, Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Department of Nuclear Physics and Biophysics in Bratislava. She is currently senior researcher at the Department of Pharmacology, Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, Slovak Medical University, where she is involved in basic, as well as clinical research projects and contributes in pedagogical activities at the university.