Vidya Chandrasekaran

Vidya Chandrasekaran is a Researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, affiliated with the Faculty of Science and the Department of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences. She holds an integrated Master's degree in Industrial Biotechnology from SASTRA University, India (2015), and is completing a PhD focused on iPSC-derived renal proximal tubule models for nephrotoxicity testing. Her research emphasizes developing in vitro systems for toxicity assessment using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).

Key research areas include:

• iPSC differentiation protocols for kidney cells
• Nephrotoxicity testing using organoid models
• Transcriptomic analysis of toxic responses
• Animal-free chemical safety assessment

She contributed to the in3 project, a multidisciplinary initiative for animal-free toxicity testing, alongside Prof. Paul Jennings. Her work has been published in journals like Toxicology in Vitro and Scientific Reports. Current projects involve advancing chronic toxicity prediction models and cadmium exposure mechanisms in renal cells.

Collaborations include Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, focusing on kidney toxicology and regenerative medicine.