About
Dr. Vijayakumar Kakade is a Research Scientist in the Department of Internal Medicine (Nephrology) at Yale School of Medicine. He holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Mysore (India, 2013) and completed postdoctoral training at the University of Kansas Medical Center. His research focuses on understanding the pathogenesis of polycystic kidney disease (PKD) and applying imaging mass cytometry (IMC) for spatial analysis of kidney diseases.
Key research areas include: (1) Role of macrophages in cyst expansion in PKD, (2) Mechanisms of tubular epithelial cell injury and cystogenesis, (3) Development of IMC-based analytical pipelines for kidney biopsy analysis. He leads the Cantley Lab's efforts in spatial proteomics and collaborates with experts like Prof. Lloyd Cantley and Dr. Gilbert Moeckel.
Notable achievements include identifying ADAMTS1 as a cyst-expansion driver and demonstrating immune cell involvement in glomerulonephritis. He has contributed to clinical trial designs for AMP kinase-activating therapies and holds a CSIR-Senior Research Fellowship. Current projects aim to translate spatial analysis tools for precision nephrology.