FASEB SRC on Acute Kidney Injury: from beside to bench (and back again)

Federation Of Amer Soc For Exper Biology, Bethesda MD

Investigators

Abstract

6. Project Summary/Abstract Acute kidney injury (AKI) is an increasingly prevalent worldwide problem that has a significant impact on patient mortality and morbidity, including a marked increased risk of progressive chronic kidney disease (CKD). AKI is also an active area of basic and clinical research. Despite this, no therapies have been definitively shown to accelerate recovery or prevent progression to CKD in patients with AKI. There are a number of reasons for this, but a major factor is the lack of effective collaborative pipelines between bench researchers studying the mechanisms and new therapeutic approaches to treat AKI, and clinical scientists studying the human disease and implementing hypothesis testing clinical trials to evaluate new therapeutics in patients with AKI. However, aside from the annual scientific meeting of the American Society of Nephrology (ASN), there are few established forums that promote direct exchange of ideas across the clinical and basic science AKI research communities in academia and industry. The concept of this new conference is therefore to develop scientific interactions and collaborations across the bench to bedside divide, and to use this as a forum to help develop a pipeline of investigators trained to think in a more translational way about the problem of AKI. To achieve this, the organizers have designed a three and a half day FASEB Scientific Research Conference. Experts from academic medicine and industry have been invited to provide state of the art talks on key, topical aspects of research in both the basic and clinical science of AKI, as well as recent advances in drug and therapeutic development for AKI. This will also provide the first evidence-based forum to discuss new approaches to study human AKI, and to develop better pre-clinical modeling that reflects the observed cellular and molecular heterogeneity of AKI in humans. We anticipate that this meeting will attract investigators and trainees from academia, industry and government agencies involved in different aspects of AKI research, and as such will provide a unique opportunity to foster new collaborative interactions between these stakeholders.