Teaching and learning as Professor H

 

 with 8.7 million views and counting - was produced by a group of students who wanted to have fun with Hafensteiner general chemistry class. Prof. H, as it is called Hafensteiner, agreed to give students five minutes (15 didn't) at the beginning of the first class of the year. Someone posing as Hafensteiner established in the law (non-cellular and not portable) and warned them of the high failure rate, at the same time destroy their hopes of entering medical school. Once the fear had set, the real Prof. H appeared, demanded to know who was the charlatan and assumed control of the intruder, to the relieved applause of his students.

Prof. H uses that moment to emphasize the difference between the stereotyped concept of the experience of the University Science and his class.

"Introducing and taunts from some very common at the beginning of the class fears, I was able to clarify things," said Hafensteiner. "My class is structured so that they can have success."

Even before the start of the first Conference, it is immediately apparent to newcomers Hafensteiner general chemistry class is different to everything they had in high school. For starters, instead of the typical students from 20 to 30 in a high school classroom, Prof. H class has ten times as many.

Hafensteiner is that their students are making a massive transition from high school aware - where there may be a lot of hand through their courses - to the University of Rochester, where they hope to identify the resources needed to tackle the problems alone.

And Hafensteiner perfectly understands that many of his students have a chemical good experience in high school, even with lots of hand in a smaller class.

"Ninety -nine percent of students who say that they hated secondary chemistry actually admit that you liked the teacher, that has nothing to do with the material," Hafensteiner said. "The challenge is to give students the opportunity to appreciate the science."

Prof. H uses many tools and strategies adopted by other teachers. Works hard to learn the names of the students, applies the material life for every day of course, cool in their classes each semester and employs > clickers to obtain immediate feedback from the students in class discussions and problems. But in the end, success of Hafensteiner as a teacher can reduce access.

"It is the type of teacher that is very accessible," said Sharath Koorathota, a former Professor of Hafensteiner and one of the producers of deception video Student Assistant. "He designed his lectures in a way that supports those who take chemistry for the first time, while it continues to defy everyone in the class."

Hafensteiner holds office three hours each week with anywhere from five to 15 students. Non-office hours as much as they are mini-clases that allow to see it approaching if students are grasping the material.

Prof. H is clearly making a difference. The University of Rochester last spring named Hafensteiner students association teacher of the year in the natural sciences, citing their support for the students and their "ability to feel young any kind".

"Yes, I can concentrate on making the three best students scientific fantastic," said Hafensteiner. "But if that's all what I did, chemical, as a discipline, he would die. One of the most valuable things I can do is make sure that all my students have an appreciation for the field".

Physical Attractiveness Impacts One's Memory

 — A study at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth has found that the attractiveness of others can have an impact on how much we lie or misrepresent and to the extent that we believe those lies/misrepresentations.

For example, Harry gets a call from a political polling organization and is asked for his opinion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. He gives it the lowest possible rating. A few weeks later, Harry meets an attractive woman named Sally online. During their conversation, Sally mentions that she answered the same question by the same polling organization and expressed high approval of Obamacare. She then asks “What approval rating did you give Obamacare when they asked you?”

This question poses a dilemma for Harry. Should he tell the truth or should he shade the truth? To the extent that Harry finds Sally very attractive and is motivated to create a positive impression, he might shade the truth about his past behavior by claiming to have expressed at least moderate approval of Obamacare. What, if any, effect would this misrepresentation have on Harry’s memory for how he actually answered on the day he was contacted by the polling organization?

“What we know is that people will embellish or distort facts when telling stories, which causes them to oftentimes remember the lies more so than the truth,” said Charles Lord, professor of psychology at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. “Research has also showed us that people tell others what they want to hear. In this case, Harry will lie to impress Sally, and he is also more likely to fool himself into believing the lie.”

Researchers asked single individuals if they agreed or disagreed with instituting “comprehensive mandatory exams” for graduating seniors using a 1-10 scale. A total of 44 individuals did not want to institute mandatory exams. Those respondents were then led to believe they would be meeting a member of the opposite sex who wanted to institute mandatory exams by scoring those a nine on the survey. They also were shown a photo of this person and asked to report on a 1-7 scale if they found their partner “physically attractive and wanted to get along with and make a good impression on this partner.”

Participants were then asked to complete a profile to be sent to their partner before an in-person meeting answering the same question about “comprehensive mandatory exams.” Researchers found there was a correlation between the attractiveness of the partner and those warming to the idea of “comprehensive mandatory exams.”

Researchers then retested students with some of the same questions they had taken two weeks earlier by asking respondents to remember what they had said in the initial survey.

“Participants with relatively attractive potential partners remembered giving more positive initial survey responses than participants with relatively unattractive potential partners,” said Lord.

Researchers then tested 117 additional undergraduate students letting them see profile pictures and foreknowledge of how those students responded. They were told they would be partnered with these individuals later in the course. Findings showed that people with perceived “attractive partners” aligned their views more closely with the partner than those with unattractive partners.

“In both experiments we found that knowing the other person’s positive evaluation in advance led participants to misrepresent their own previous evaluations, and this misrepresentation, in turn, altered memories for participants’ own actual past actions,” said Lord.

Sara E. Brady, assistant professor at Charleston Southern University in Charleston, SC is also a lead author on the paper.

These findings appear in the forthcoming edition of the Journal of Social Cognition.

University of Utah Awarded $20.4 Million From NIH to Advance Translational Research in Medicine

 

Newswise — For parents whose infants have been diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy, comprehending what the rare condition means for their child’s life can be devastating. SMA is a progressive, debilitating and potentially fatal disease of the motor neurons caused by the absence of the survival motor neuron gene, or SMN1. It’s a condition that occurs in one in every 6,000 live births.

But researchers at the University of Utah Center for Clinical and Translational Science are giving parents dealing with the heartbreak of seeing a child diagnosed with the condition something important: Hope for a cure. Researchers have made strides in understanding SMA, everyday coming steps closer to finding an effective treatment for the genetic condition. Their work is only one example of potentially life-changing research taking place daily at the Center.

The Center taps into the University of Utah’s strengths in genetics and bioinformatics to translate promising bench science into practices that improve health. It serves as an academic home for clinical and translational research, developing innovative health services for the community and health researchers, and training a new generation of clinical and translational investigators.

The Center’s track record of success this month has earned it a $20.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health that will allow it to provide support for all aspects of translational research over the next five years. The University of Utah is just one of 15 institutions in the U.S. selected this month to receive an NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award or CTSA.

“This award is important to continue our work in translational science. This funding will help scientists and physicians train those who may be responsible for tomorrow’s medical breakthroughs,” said Vivian S. Lee, M.D., Ph.D., MBA and University of Utah senior vice president for health sciences.

“We’ve already made a number of important research discoveries in our Center for Clinical and Translational Science, and the NIH’s continued support of our facility shows their confidence in our commitment to keep making strides in several research areas,” said Lee, also dean of the School of Medicine and CEO of University of Utah Health Care.

Donald McClain, M.D. Ph.D., and Carrie Byington, M.D., —the Center’s directors —said the new NIH funding will help the University of Utah to continue to be an important voice in the broader discussion of improving the quality of health care while reducing costs.

"The importance of this Center to the State of Utah is that it brings resources together that support the full range of clinical research, from basic discovery science to how research findings are best implemented into the practices of our community physicians. The Center facilitates the communication among all of our stakeholders, so that investigators making basic discoveries can speak with experts in turning those discoveries into new cures or diagnostics, and they in turn can speak to experts in partnering with industry to get the products to market,” said McClain, who besides overseeing the Center, serves as Associate Vice President for Clinical and Translational Science, the Bettilyon Chair in Diabetes Research and a Professor of Internal Medicine and Biochemistry at the University of Utah.

“In this partnership among Intermountain Healthcare, the Veterans Administration, the Utah Department of Health, and the University of Utah, we can ensure that advances made across the entire nation are brought to the entire population of Utah rapidly and safely,” he added.

Byington noted one of the research initiatives linked to the Center is a planning grant to develop a National Research Mentoring Network for those under-represented in medicine. The mentoring network represents a novel approach to increase the national capacity for biomedical science through the recruitment and training of the best and brightest candidates from all backgrounds. Byington serves as principal investigator of the planning award given to support the development of the network through the entire CTSA consortium of 60 sites.

“Participation in the CTSA consortium allows Utah to address some of the most important issues in biomedical science and to collaborate with some of the best academic health centers in the U.S.,” said Byington, the H.A. and Edna Benning Presidential Professor of Pediatrics, Vice Dean for Academic Affairs and Faculty Development and Vice Chair for the Research Enterprise, Department of Pediatrics at the University of Utah.

The NIH started the CTSA program in 2006 as a tool in the health care reform movement to provide higher quality and more affordable health care to people. The University of Utah receiving its first round of CTSA funding in 2008, when it joined other institutions across the country in trying to find research breakthroughs that could change outcomes in patient care more rapidly move breakthroughs in basic research to breakthroughs in patient care.

The University of Utah Center for Clinical and Translational Science consists of eight core areas including biomedical informatics; clinical services; community outreach and collaboration; patient-centered outcomes research methods; recruitment, retention and safety; research education, training and career development; study design and biostatistics and translational technologies and resources.

Besides researching conditions like SMA, the Center for Clinical and Translational Science has worked on literally hundreds of protocols, including studies related to obesity and cancer, said McClain.
By 2018, the Center has a number of goals it wants to meet, including:
• Increasing the quality, quantity, safety, efficiency and impact of translational research for all conditions.
• Providing resources and services to support and speed clinical and translational research of all kinds.
• Training, mentoring and supporting the next generation of translational investigators to become principal investigators and productive faculty members.
• Creating a leadership structure that represents all aspects of translational science.
• Engaging in a process of continuous evaluation, improvement and innovation in all of these areas.
• Proving special expertise to a CTSA consortium in the areas of human genetics, genotype/phenotype correlation, health services research including comparative effectiveness, medical device innovation, and the development of electronic health records as tools for medical care and research.

 

 

Scientists Identify Protein Linking Exercise to Brain Health

Newswise — BOSTON — A protein that is increased by endurance exercise has been isolated and given to non-exercising mice, in which it turned on genes that promote brain health and encourage the growth of new nerves involved in learning and memory, report scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School.

The findings, reported in the journal Cell Metabolism, help explain the well-known capacity of endurance exercise to improve cognitive function, particularly in older people. If the protein can be made in a stable form and developed into a drug, it might lead to improved therapies for cognitive decline in older people and slow the toll of neurodegenerative diseases such Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, according to the investigators.

“What is exciting is that a natural substance can be given in the bloodstream that can mimic some of the effects of endurance exercise on the brain,” said Bruce Spiegelman, PhD, of Dana-Farber and HMS. He is co-senior author of the publication with Michael E. Greenberg, PhD, chair of neurobiology at HMS.

The Spiegelman group previously reported that the protein, called FNDC5, is produced by muscular exertion and is released into the bloodstream as a variant called irisin. In the new research, endurance exercise – mice voluntarily running on a wheel for 30 days – increased the activity of a metabolic regulatory molecule, PGC-1a, in muscles, which spurred a rise in FNDC5 protein. The increase of FNDC5 in turn boosted the expression of a brain-health protein, BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic protein) in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in learning and memory.

It has been found that exercise stimulates BDNF in the hippocampus, one of only two areas of the adult brain that can generate new nerve cells. BDNF promotes development of new nerves and synapses – connections between nerves that allow learning and memory to be stored – and helps preserve the survival of brain cells.

How exercise raises BDNF activity in the brain wasn’t known; the new findings linking exercise, PGC-1a, FNDC5 and BDNF provide a molecular pathway for the effect, although Spiegelman and his colleagues suggest there are probably others.

Having shown that FNDC5 is a molecular link between exercise and increased BDNF in the brain, the scientists asked whether artificially increasing FNDC5 in the absence of exercise would have the same effect. They used a harmless virus to deliver the protein to mice through the bloodstream, in hopes the FNDC5 could reach the brain and raise BDNF activity. Seven days later, they examined the mouse brains and observed a significant increase in BDNF in the hippocampus.

“Perhaps the most exciting result overall is that peripheral deliver of FNDC5 with adenoviral vectors is sufficient to induce central expression of Bdnf and other genes with potential neuroprotective functions or those involved in learning and memory,” the authors said. Spiegelman cautioned that further research is needed to determine whether giving FNDC5 actually improves cognitive function in the animals. The scientists also aren’t sure whether the protein that got into the brain is FNDC5 itself, or irisin, or perhaps another variant of the protein.

Spiegelman said that development of irisin as a drug will require creating a more stable form of the protein.

The first author of the report is Christiane Wrann, PhD, in the Spiegelman lab.
The research was supported by the JPB Foundation and National Institutes of Health (DK31405 and DK90861).

About Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (www.dana-farber.org) is a principal teaching affiliate of the Harvard Medical School and is among the leading cancer research and care centers in the United States. It is a founding member of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, designated a comprehensive cancer center by the National Cancer Institute. It provides adult cancer care with Brigham and Women’s Hospital as Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center and it provides pediatric care with Boston Children’s Hospital as Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center. Dana-Farber is the top ranked cancer center in New England, according to U.S. News & World Report, and one of the largest recipients among independent hospitals of National Cancer Institute and National Institutes of Health grant funding. Follow Dana-Farber on Facebook and on Twitter.

 

UTHealth Researchers Study Device for Atrial Fibrillation at Memorial Hermann Heart & Vascular Institute

Newswise — HOUSTON – (Oct. 10, 2013) – A clinical trial evaluating a cardiac plug for the prevention of stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation has been launched by cardiology researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) Medical School.

In September, UTHealth cardiologists implanted the state’s first AMPLATZER™ Cardiac Plug (ACP) in a patient at the Memorial Hermann Heart & Vascular Institute-Texas Medical Center (HVI). The study will determine if the transcatheter device is safe and effective in preventing blood clots from migrating out of the left atrial appendage in patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation who are at high risk for stroke.

“Atrial fibrillation is a common problem and patients need blood thinners to help prevent stroke,” said Pranav Loyalka, M.D., co-principal investigator of the Houston study, associate professor in the Program of Advanced Heart Failure at the UTHealth Medical School and associate chief of the medical division at the Center for Advanced Heart Failure at HVI. “AMPLATZER™ is one of the devices being studied that could give patients the ability to not take blood thinners.”

Atrial fibrillation is the most common type of arrhythmia, a problem with the rate or rhythm of the heartbeat caused by dysfunctional electrical activity. The heart can beat too fast, too slow or irregularly. It causes blood to pool in the atria, the heart’s upper two chambers, causing an inadequate supply of blood to pump into the ventricles, the lower chambers.

“When the blood pools in the atria, blood clots can form in the left atrial appendage, the site of 90 percent of blood clots associated with atrial fibrillation,” said Ramesh Hariharan, M.D., co-principal investigator and professor and medical director of the Complex Arrhythmia Center at the UTHealth Medical School and HVI.

An estimated 2.7 million Americans suffer from atrial fibrillation, which causes 20 percent of all ischemic strokes, the most common form of stroke. A person with atrial fibrillation is five times more likely to have a stroke.

“Symptoms of atrial fibrillation can include a racing heart and shortness of breath,” said Biswajit Kar, M.D., co-investigator, professor in the Program of Advanced Heart Failure at UTHealth and chief of the medical division at the Center for Advanced Heart Failure at HVI. “Over time, it can lead to heart failure.”

The most common blood thinners prescribed for atrial fibrillation are warfarin and dabigatran.

“The biggest drawback of warfarin is that patients need regular blood tests to check levels of the drug, which typically keep changing, causing cardiologists to adjust the dosage to prevent dangerous bleeding,” said Richard Smalling, M.D., co-investigator, professor and the Jay Brent Sterling Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and James D. Woods Distinguished Chair of Cardiovascular Medicine at the UTHealth Medical School and interventional cardiologist at HVI.

“Dabigatran remains at more consistent levels in the body but there is no reversal agent for it, so if a person is in an automobile or other accident, there is a risk for excessive bleeding,” said Saumya Sharma, M.D., co-investigator, assistant professor in the Complex Arrhythmia Center at UTHealth and cardiologist at HVI.

The AMPLATZER™ plug is a self-expanding device made from nitinol mesh to seal the left atrial appendage, minimizing the chance of blood clots migrating into bloodstream. Patients usually have a one-night hospital stay.

“It’s like a windsock,” Loyalka said. “It plugs it so that nothing can get through and we believe this can help prevent stroke.”

The multiple-site study will enroll between 400 and 3,000 patients. It is randomized with two patients receiving the device and one patient receiving traditional medical treatment using long-term, blood-thinning medication. For more information, call the Center for Advanced Heart Failure at Memorial Hermann Heart & Vascular Institute-Texas Medical Center at (713) 704-4300.

Study Finds Racial and Social Disparities in Kidney Allocation Among Young Transplant Recipients

 

• Among kidney transplant recipients younger than 40 years of age, African Americans and individuals with less education were more likely to receive lower-quality organs than Caucasians and those with college degrees.
• African Americans with higher education levels were not more likely to receive a lower-quality kidney than Caucasians with college degrees.

Newswise — Washington, — Among younger kidney transplant recipients, a disproportionate number of African Americans and individuals with less education receive organs that are of lower quality or are considered marginal, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN). The findings suggest that there are racial and social disparities in the allocation of transplanted organs that need to be addressed.

Older kidney disease patients who have a high risk of dying while on dialysis may benefit from accepting a so-called extended criteria donor (ECD) kidney—which is more likely to fail than a standard criteria donor kidney—rather than remaining on a transplant wait list. But younger patients and those with short wait times are usually better off holding out for a standard criteria donor kidney. Despite this, some young patients still end up receiving ECD kidneys.

Rajesh Mohandas MD, MPH, Mark Segal MD, PhD (University of Florida), and their colleagues looked to see if demographic factors play a role in whether younger patients accept ECD kidneys. They analyzed all first single-kidney transplants documented in the United States from 2000 to 2009 in patients 18 to 40 years of age and waitlisted less than three years.

Among the major findings:
• Of 13,615 ECD transplants, 591 (4.3%) kidneys went to recipients between 18 and 40 years of age who were waitlisted less than three years.
• African Americans were 1.7 times more likely to receive an ECD kidney than Caucasians.
• Individuals with less education were 2.3 times more likely to receive an ECD kidney than those with a college degree; however, African Americans with higher education levels were not more likely to receive such a lower-quality kidney than Caucasians with college degrees.

“To our knowledge, this is the first report showing that there are racial and social disparities in the quality of allocated transplanted organs. Understanding that such disparities exist is the essential first step to addressing inequalities in health care and to attempt to improve patient outcomes,” said Dr. Mohandas. He added that it is important to ensure that kidney transplant candidates are not just informed, but also educated about their choices.

Study co-authors include Michael Casey, MD, Robert Cook, MD, MPH, Kenneth Lamb, PhD, and Xuerong Wen, MS.

Disclosures: The authors reported no financial disclosures.

The article, entitled “Racial and Socioeconomic Disparities in the Allocation of Extended Criteria Donor Kidneys,” will appear online at http://cjasn.asnjournals.org/ on October 10, 2013, doi: 10.2215/CJN01430213.

The content of this article does not reflect the views or opinions of The American Society of Nephrology (ASN). Responsibility for the information and views expressed therein lies entirely with the author(s). ASN does not offer medical advice. All content in ASN publications is for informational purposes only, and is not intended to cover all possible uses, directions, precautions, drug interactions, or adverse effects. This content should not be used during a medical emergency or for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. Please consult your doctor or other qualified health care provider if you have any questions about a medical condition, or before taking any drug, changing your diet or commencing or discontinuing any course of treatment. Do not ignore or delay obtaining professional medical advice because of information accessed through ASN. Call 911 or your doctor for all medical emergencies.

Founded in 1966, and with more than 14,000 members, the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) leads the fight against kidney disease by educating health professionals, sharing new knowledge, advancing research, and advocating the highest quality care for patients.

Recently published research by the founder of ClinMet and UC San Diego team demonstrates value of metabolomics based on urine to translational medicine

 

SAN DIEGO, Oct.11, 2013 - ClinMet announced today that researchers of the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have published new research of metabolomics that uncovers a novel, feature and very consistent biochemical signature in urine associated with diabetic kidney disease. The results, which form a basis of the proprietary clinical metabolomics of ClinMet platform, have implications for the identification of biomarkers clinically useful for kidney function and to sharpen the development of drugs and clinical trials related to chronic kidney disease, as well as diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease.

The new research, authored by U.C. San Diego Professor and founder scientific ClinMet, Kumar Sharma, M.D., F.A.H.A (Director of the Center for translational medicine Renal Division of Nefrologia-hipertension and the Institute of Medicine of the metabolomics) and his colleagues, appears online in the journal of the American Society of Nephrology. ClinMet has an exclusive license to use this set of metabolites in the development of drugs and other applications, based on patents requested by UC San Diego.

The researchers quantified 94 metabolites in the urine in patients with diabetes (type 1 or type 2) and chronic kidney disease (CKD), subjects with diabetes but no kidney disease and healthy controls. They found that 13 of the metabolites were significantly different in people with disease compared with healthy controls (p-values between 10-3 to 10-18), and 12 of 13 was still highly significant in comparison with patients with type 1 or type 2 and not CKD. In addition, 12 of the 13 metabolites were linked to Mitochondrial Metabolism and suggested global suppression of mitochondrial activity in subjects with chronic kidney diseases in relation to healthy individuals. This conclusion is in sharp contrast to prevailing beliefs about excess activity mitochondrial having a causal relationship with diabetic complications. The conclusions based on urine metabolomics studies were independently validated based on protein and DNA analysis, indicating reduced mitochondrial contents in the kidneys of patients with diabetic nephropathy.

"It is evident from this study that urine and plasma-based metabolomics can be a rich source of biomarkers to understand and treat kidney disease diabetes and possibly related to cardiovascular complications," said Dr. Sharma. "This approach also offers direct insights into the biochemical pathways associated with kidney dysfunction".

Power of clinical metabolomics

"Genomics can help to predict the overall risk of disease or potential response of a patient to a drug, but you can not capture the effects that changes in diet, environmental factors or other diseases in the progression of the disease or improvement," said Yesh Subramanian, President, CEO and co-founder of ClinMet. "Clinical metabolomics, by contrast, allows us to quickly see biochemically what happens in the specific pathways of the disease over time and in the context of other factors that affect the health of the patient, including drug therapy. This makes clinical metabolomics a highly useful platform for research and translational drug development".

"We see clinical metabolomics allowing pharmaceutical and biotech clients to effectively apply the medicine precision today", said Mr. Subramanian. "The ability to predict which patients are likely to respond better to specific treatments holds immense promise for sharpening of phase 2 and 3 clinical trials now and improve the clinical medicine in the future".

About ClinMet (clinical metabolomics Inc.)

ClinMet, founded in 2011, is a privately held company headquartered in San Diego, CA that provides pharmaceutical companies with clinically relevant insights and useful data on the effectiveness of the medication, safety and mechanism of action using its proprietary platform urine biomarker metabolomics for diabetes, kidney disease, obesity, and cardiovascular disease. ClinMet applies its unique combination of clinical expertise, in-depth proprietary metabolomics experience and computer skills to improve the rate of speed and the success of drug development. The company helps drug developers efficiently transform compounds promising safe and effective medicines and to effectively develop and implement its strategy of companion Diagnostics.

ClinMet technology and clinical experience is based on the legacy of research of William Nyhan, M.D., Ph.d., founder of head of the biochemical genetics and laboratory of metabolomics and founding Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at UC San Diego. Dr. Nyhan, one of the founders of the field of metabolic diseases human and his team have developed many methods of diagnosis standard of gold of the mass spectrometry and analysis metabolomic which are used by the centres of excellence in human genetics and metabolism around the world. On the other hand, cientifico-fundador ClinMet, Kumar Sharma, is an expert recognized worldwide in diabetic nephropathy and translational research. He has conducted several studies milestone in diabetic nephropathy in a level of translational research and has dedicated his career to develop new therapies for patients with chronic kidney disease.