S. Dumas chair

Endothelial niche dynamics in Kidney Aging, disease and REpair (EndoKARE)

The endothelium is a dynamic and heterogeneous component of blood vessels that shapes tissue microenvironments. At the EndoKARE lab, we aim to identify drivers of renal endothelial niche dysfunction in kidney aging, injury and disease. Targeting the renal endothelium offers innovative opportunities to promote kidney repair and regeneration – an urgent need in our aging societies, with chronic kidney disease projected to be the fifth leading cause of death by 2050.

Team members

Team leader

Sébastien DUMAS

Junior Professor Chair (INSERM) – Team leader

Career path
Sébastien Dumas earned a PharmD in 2014 from South Paris University and a PhD in Physiology and Pathophysiology in 2015 from Paris-Saclay University (France). From 2017 to 2022, he was a postdoc in Prof. P. Carmeliet’s angiogenesis and vascular metabolism lab (Belgium) before joining Prof. T. Rabelink’s vascular and regenerative medicine lab (Netherlands) as a senior scientist until 2025. Since March 2025, he has led a team at INSERM U1297 in Toulouse.

Main domain of expertise
Endothelial cell biology, Kidney pathophysiology, Cell metabolism, Single cell and spatial omics (transcriptomics, epigenomics, metabolomics), Bioinformatics.

Email:sebastien.dumas@inserm.fr

Post-Doctoral fellow

Rémi MONTANÉ

Rémi Montané obtained his PhD in Pathophysiology from the University of Toulouse in June 2025. During his studies, he conducted extensive research into the role of brown and beige adipose tissue in systemic energy metabolism.
He joined the team as a postdoctoral researcher, investigating metabolic maladaptation in kidney glomerular endothelial cells during ageing and how these alterations drive the onset and progression of chronic kidney disease.

Email:remi.montane@inserm.fr

PhD Student

Vera POPOLIZIO

PhD Student

Vera Popolizio is an Italian student who obtained her Bachelor’s Degree in Biological Science at the University of Bari. She completed her studies with a Master’s Degree in Biology Applied to Biomedical Research at Milan University in 2023. She continued her Master’s thesis research with the support of a Fellowship from the University of Milan-Bicocca.

Vera joined the EndoKARE team in October 2025 as a PhD student enrolled in the BSB doctoral program at the University of Toulouse. She was awarded a PhD fellowship by the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research to study glomerular endothelial cell dysfunction in aging and chronic kidney disease.

Email:vera.popolizio@inserm.fr

Open position

Technical staff

Open position

Endothelial metabolic determinants of glomerulosclerosis

Coordinator : Sébastien Dumas

Glomerulosclerosis is a common fibrotic lesion in chronic kidney disease (CKD) and kidney aging, contributing to glomerular dysfunction and progressive kidney function decline. Focusing on the glomerular endothelial niche, we deploy single-cell and spatial omics analysis along with state-of-the-art in vitro and in vivo models to characterize and target the molecular and metabolic dysfunction of glomerular endothelial cells and their niche in aging and CKD.

Selected publications

Endothelial to mesenchymal transition in kidney fibrosis Jacobs ME, de Vries DK, Engelse MA, Dumas SJ*, Rabelink TJ*. (*shared senior authorship) Nephrol Dial Transplant. 2024 Pubmed

Vasculogenesis in kidney organoids upon transplantation Koning M*, Dumas SJ*, Avramut MC, Koning RI, Meta E, Lievers E, Wiersma LE, Borri M, Liang X, Xie L, Liu P, Chen F, Lin L, Luo Y, Mulder J, Spijker HS, Jaffredo T, van den Berg BM, Carmeliet P, van den Berg CW, Rabelink TJ. (*shared junior authorship) NPJ Regen Med. 2022 Pubmed

Phenotypic diversity and metabolic specialization of renal endothelial cells Dumas SJ, Meta E, Borri M, Luo Y, Li X, Rabelink TJ, Carmeliet P. Nat Rev Nephrol. 2021 Pubmed

Single-Cell Transcriptome Atlas of Murine Endothelial Cells Kalucka J*, de Rooij LPMH*, Goveia J*, Rohlenova K, Dumas SJ, Meta E, Conchinha NV, Taverna F, Teuwen LA, Veys K, García-Caballero M, Khan S, Geldhof V, Sokol L, Chen R, Treps L, Borri M, de Zeeuw P, Dubois C, Karakach TK, Falkenberg KD, Parys M, Yin X, Vinckier S, Du Y, Fenton RA, Schoonjans L, Dewerchin M, Eelen G, Thienpont B, Lin L, Bolund L, Li X, Luo Y, Carmeliet P. Cell. 2020 (*shared junior authorship) Pubmed

Single-Cell RNA Sequencing Reveals Renal Endothelium Heterogeneity and Metabolic Adaptation to Water Deprivation Dumas SJ, Meta E, Borri M, Goveia J, Rohlenova K, Conchinha NV, Falkenberg K, Teuwen LA, de Rooij L, Kalucka J, Chen R, Khan S, Taverna F, Lu W, Parys M, De Legher C, Vinckier S, Karakach TK, Schoonjans L, Lin L, Bolund L, Dewerchin M, Eelen G, Rabelink TJ, Li X, Luo Y, Carmeliet P. J Am Soc Nephrol. 2020 Pubmed

More publications

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