UAB Synopsis, Vol. 27, No. 34, September 15, 2008

UC-San Diego Is Clinical Partner for $4.2 Million, 5-Year Program

UAB recently was named one of the nation’s eight NIH-funded George M. O’Brien Kidney Research Centers.

UAB Division of Nephrology Director Anupam Agarwal, MD, will direct the $4,228,000, 5-year award that creates the UAB-University of California-San Diego (UCSD) O’Brien Core Center for Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) Research. Codirectors of the O’Brien center will be nephrologists Paul W. Sanders, MD, of UAB, and Ravindra L. Mehta, MD, of UCSD.

The center award bestows instant standing to the division as one of the top ne-phrology programs in the United States, Dr. Agarwal says.

“We are proud to have scored highest of any applicant with our submission to the National Institute for Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases,” he says. “We had outstanding support from across UAB to come up with a center that includes interdisciplinary expertise. That success, and being able to integrate the UCSD collaborators into the group, contributed to the outstanding score we achieved.”

AKI is a major cause for morbidity and mortality in hospitalized patients, developing in 5% to 7% of all general medical-surgical patients The condition compli- cates the course of recovery of 15% to 25% of ICU patients. Despite advances in renal replacement therapy, mortality of AKI patients has remained relatively constant for some 40 years, Dr. Agarwal says.

The UAB-UCSD O’Brien Center has the following goals:

• Facilitate hypothesis driven research through the support of shared core facilities and leverage core technologies into new projects, interactions, and collaborations in AKI research;
• Foster collaborations between UAB and UCSD investigators and an extended research base of scientists from regional, national, and international institutions; and
• Provide intellectual resources and research infrastructure to attract new and established investigators to AKI research.

The center consists of an administrative core, three biomedical research cores, and a biostastical/bioinformatics resource core.

They and their directors are:

• Clinical Studies Core – Dr. Mehta;
• Preclinical Studies Core – Dr. Sanders;
• Bioanalytical Resource Core – UAB Pharmacology and Toxicology Professor Stephen Barnes, PhD; and
• Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Resource Core – UAB School of Public Health Professor Gary R. Cutter, PhD.