Anja Wilmes is an assistant professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She is the head of the "Cell and Tissue Culture Technology lab", working closely together with the Molceular Toxicology lab (Head: Paul Jennings), situated at the department of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences. She received a PhD in “Cell and Molecular Biology” from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand under the supervision of Prof. John H. Miller. Afterwards she worked at the Medical University of Innsbruck, Austria as a PostDoc where she habilitated (venia docendi) in “Physiology” with the thesis "Molecular investigations of chemical stress induction in the renal proximal tubule” in 2016.
Her work focuses on the development of New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) with a focus on the application of human cell culture models for toxicity testing. Anja has a long standing experience in human renal cell systems, including primary cells, cell lines and induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) derived cells and developed differentiation protocols into renal proximal tubular-like cells (PTL) and podocyte-like cells. Additionally, she is working with other human cell systems, including hepatocytes (iPSC-derived organoids and cell lines), endothelial cells (iPSC-derived and cell lines) and iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes. A major focus of her research is on advanced cell culture systems, including microporous growth supports (transwells) and microphysiological systems (MPS), e.g. organ on a chip cultures.
Anja’s research interest include, personalized medicine, renal transport, drug metabolism and cellular stress response pathways. In her work she uses transcriptomics (RNASeq, TempO-Seq), High Content Imaging, Seahorse mitostress assay (mitochondria toxicity) and other cellular assays.
Anja was previously involved in the Predict-IV (7th framework), StemBANCC (IMI) and EU-ToxRisk (Horizon 2020) projects and she was the project leader of the Stiftung Set project “Investigating animal-free extracellular matrix (ECM) coatings for iPSC culture” and the ProCare project “IPS-MITOTOX”. She is currently involved in the EU projects RISK-HUNT3R and the Dutch project VHP4Safety, the EFSA project ADME4NGRA, the Christoph Merian Stiftung project "IPS-LIVERTOX" and Seed project "Human Hepatocytes-Kupffer Cells Organoids on-a-chip".
