Melina Messing is an immunologist, kidney disease researcher, and patient advocate specializing in polycystic kidney disease (PKD). She is a postdoctoral fellow in Thomas Weimbs's laboratory at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she studies the biological mechanisms underlying kidney injury and disease progression.
She also serves as scientific director of the Ren-Nu program at Santa Barbara Nutrients, helping translate emerging research on nutrition and metabolic health into practical support for people living with PKD. Diagnosed with rapidly progressing PKD and polycystic liver disease, Messing brings both scientific expertise and lived experience to her work, and she regularly speaks to patient, clinical, and scientific audiences about nutrition, lifestyle, research, and patient empowerment.
Her research spans innate immunity and inflammation, muscle regeneration, and metabolic approaches to slowing kidney disease progression, with work appearing in Frontiers in Nutrition, EMBO Reports, and the Journal of Immunology. Her writing explores the intersection of biomedical science, clinical care, and the everyday realities of inherited chronic disease, with an emphasis on evidence, agency, and hope. She shares updates on YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
My grandfather died of a chronic kidney disease that he handed down without knowing it: polycystic kidney disease (PKD). My brother and I were born with it, too. It’s progressive and has no cure.
For most of my twenties, I felt physically fine. Channeling my anxiety about the future, I became a biomedical scientist. I spent those years trusting a simple assumption: If anything could change the trajectory of my condition, …
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How nutrition for polycystic kidney disease changed my life
