Category: Uncategorized

Chuang’s minireview paper is published at Nephron. It is also highlighted by ASN in the Loop today.

Albuminuria is the hallmark of nephrotic syndrome (NS), a leading cause of chronic kidney disease that affects 500 million people worldwide, but the molecular mechanism underlying albuminuria-induced kidney injury remains poorly defined.  Using a genetic model of nephrotic syndrome and an acquired model of focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, Sun-Ji Park, PhD, in her second first-author PNAS […]

A new, minimally-invasive bio-diagnostic device may replace painful blood collection techniques used to detect acute kidney injury (AKI) biomarkers in children in the future. WashU collaborators, nephrologist Ying Maggie Chen, MD, PhD, and bio-engineer Srikanth Singamaneni, PhD, have received a grant from the OVCR (Office of Vice Chancellor for Research) Seed Grant Program to study […]

Founded in 1908, ASCI is one of the oldest and most esteemed nonprofit honor societies of physician-scientists.

A total of 95 new members, from 46 different institutions and a wide variety of medical backgrounds, is formally inducted during the ASCI Dinner and New Member Induction Ceremony in Chicago on April 8, 2022.

Maggie gave a talk, “Targeting ER for novel therapeutics and monitoring in acute kidney injury” at UAB/UCSD O’Brien Kidney Center Symposium on 3/7/2022.

Congratulations to Ying Maggie Chen, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Nephrology, and co-inventors Sun-Ji Park, Yeawon Kim and Fumihiko Urano,  on their patent “Compositions and methods for treating and preventing endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress-mediated kidney diseases” that was issued on September 28, 2021.   The ER plays important roles in […]

Yeawon Kim, a member of the Y. Maggie Chen Lab, is first author of the study titled “Ultrabright Plasmonic-Fluor Nanolabel-Enabled Detection of a Urinary ER Stress Biomarker in Autosomal Dominant Tubulointerstitial Kidney Disease (ADTKD),”published, in the American Journal of Physiology – Renal Physiology as an Innovative Methodology article. (Authors: Yeawon Kim, Zheyu Wang, Chuang Li, Kendrah Kidd, Yixuan Wang, Bryce […]

Ying Maggie Chen, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, Division of Nephrology, is the recipient of a UAB-UCSD O’Brien Center Pilot Award to study therapies for acute kidney injury (AKI) Renal ischemia-reperfusion injury is the leading cause of AKI in both native and transplanted kidneys.  Evidence shows that tubular endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress plays a causative role […]

Ying Maggie Chen, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Nephrology at Washington University in St. Louis, will present at the 2021 FASEB Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER) Conference: Structure, Function, and Disease virtual conference to be held June 22-24, 2021.  Dr Chen will speak on Endoplasmic Reticulum Dyshomeostasis and Kidney Disease. This FASEB […]

Ying Maggie Chen, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Nephrology at Washington University in St. Louis, will present at the 2021 George M. O’Brien Kidney Center at Yale Annual Symposium.  The virtual event is held Friday, May 7, 2021.  Advances in Kidney Research is the theme of this year’s symposium.  Dr. Chen will […]

Chuang has published his review “Endoplasmic Reticulum-Associated Biomarkers for Molecular Phenotyping of Rare Kidney Disease” in International Journal of Molecular Sciences today

Sun-Ji’s review article “Endoplasmic Reticulum Calcium Homeostasis in Kidney Disease: Pathogenesis and Therapeutic Targets” has been published in American Journal of Pathology this month.

American Society of Nephrology and KidneyCure (ASN Foundation) have invited Maggie, MD, PhD, associate professor of medicine in the Division of Nephrology, Washington University, to serve on their ASN Grants Review Committee. Established in 2012, KidneyCure currently provides over $3 million per year to nephrology fellows and new investigators to help facilitate in their transition […]

Maggie has been appointed as a special government employee to the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) Nephrology Subcommittee. Subcommittee members provide scientific peer review of Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) research program applications submitted to Biomedical Laboratory Research and Development and Clinical Science Research and Development Services.  Chen will serve on the nephrology panel to […]

We are awarded a Northwestern University George M. O’Brien Kidney Core Center (NU GoKidney) Pilot and Feasibility Grant.  NU GoKidney is a kidney research center that fosters research leading to the discovery of novel nephrotherapeutics that will transform the prevention and treatment of kidney diseases and eventually lead to cures. The center’s goal is to […]

Sun-Ji presented her research about discovery of novel podocyte ER calcium stabilizers on 11/9/2019 at the ASN national meeting. Congrats!

Maggie is awarded a $1.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense for her study “Develop Novel Podocyte Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER) Calcium Stabilizers to Treat Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis (FSGS).” FSGS is the most common primary glomerulopathy leading to renal failure and disproportionately affects African-Americans, a highly represented population among military personnel and Veterans. While […]

Maggie is the recipient of a 2-year, $300,000 Mallinckrodt Challenge Grant for her study “Targeting Podocyte Dysfunctional Ryanodine Receptor to Treat Nephrotic Syndrome.” The overall goals of this proposal are to determine the molecular mechanisms underlying increased podocyte endoplasmic reticulum (ER) calcium efflux under ER stress. The proposed study could lead to a significant leap […]

Our PNAS paper is highlighted by Nature Reviews Nephrology today! Congrats, Sun-Ji and Yeawon!

A new study first-authored by Sun-Ji Park, found a new class of drugs that shows great promise in the treatment of nephrotic syndrome (NS) resulting from podocyte endoplasmic reticulum (ER) dysfunction. NS is a leading cause of chronic kidney disease affecting over 500 million people worldwide. Damage to podocytes, the highly specialized epithelial cells that […]

Maggie just received an Investigator Matching Micro Grant funded by the Center for Drug Discovery (CDD) at Washington University for her proposal titled Development of a Novel Biotherapeutic Protein to Treat Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress-Mediated Kidney Disease. Although accumulating evidence has highlighted the important role of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress in the pathogenesis of various glomerular […]

Yeawon and Maggie were among the Washington University innovators and inventors honored at the 2nd Annual Celebration of Inventors on May 7, 2019, at Innovation Hall in the Cortex Innovation Community.  The event was sponsored by the Office of Technology Management (OTM). Recognized at the celebration were a total of 117 faculty members who were […]

A U.S. patent was issued on 12/18/2018 to Division of Nephrology faculty member Ying (Maggie) Chen, MD, PhD, and co-inventor Yeawon Kim for their discovery of noninvasive biomarkers that have the potential to help diagnose certain human kidney diseases in their earliest stages of development. The patent is based on their research published in JCI […]

Sun-Ji presented her poster “Inhibiting podocyte endoplasmic reticulum stress-mediated apoptosis to treat genetic nephrotic syndrome” on 10/27/2018 at the kidney Week 2018.

Sun-Ji published an invited review “Endoplasmic reticulum stress and monogenic kidney diseases in precision nephrology” in Pediatric Nephrology. Congrats!

Washington University Office of Technology Management filed a provisional patent application entitled “Compositions and methods for treating and preventing endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress-mediated kidney diseases” on 6/19/2018. The inventors include Ying Chen, Sun-Ji Park, Yeawon Kim and Fumihiko Urano.

Yeawon’s study, Elevated Urinary CRELD2 is Associated with Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress-mediated Kidney Disease, was published online in the journal JCI Insight, December 7, 2017. The ER is the central site for folding, posttranslational modifications and transport of secretory and membrane proteins. When there is a mismatch between the load of unfolded/misfolded proteins and the folding […]

Sun-Ji’s poster entitled, “Targeting Podocyte Endoplasmic Reticulum Calcium Depletion to Treat Nephrotic Syndrome” has been selected as a “topic of interest” for students and residents. As a part of the ASN Kidney STARS program, 10 participants and their mentors visited Sun-Ji’s poster today.

Ying (Maggie) Chen, Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Nephrology has been awarded a Children’s Discovery Institute (CDI) and Human Pluripotent Stem Cell (HPSC) Core Pilot Grant for her proposal Modeling Tubular Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress-induced Renal Fibrosis using Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells. Dr. Chen’s research focuses on the genetic factors responsible for […]

Assistant Professor of Medicine Ying (Maggie) Chen, MD, PhD, was an invited speaker at the Experimental Biology (EB) 2017 meeting, which attracts 14,000 scientists each year. This year’s meeting was held in Chicago, Ill, April 22-27. Dr. Chen presented her talk Podocyte ER stress and Podocytopathies in the “Diseases of the Endoplasmic Reticulum” session. This session included six […]

A case report by a team of Washington University nephrologists and pathologists from Arkana Laboratories may prove valuable in directing future treatment of Castleman’s Disease (CD) with renal involvement. The report, published in the journal BMC Nephrology, describes a patient presenting with a very rare, aggressive form of multicentric CD with renal thrombotic microangiopathy (TMA). […]

Angiopoietin-1 (Ang-1), a vascular growth factor secreted by kidney proximal tubular cells, pericytes and podocytes, is essential for regulating blood vessel development and repair after injury.  Ang-1 is also a promising therapeutic agent to target renal fibrosis, according to a study by WU researchers recently published in PLoSOne, As a result of injury to the […]

Certain environmental and genetic factors can disrupt endoplasmic reticulum (ER) function and result in a situation called “ER stress”, in which misfolded/unfolded proteins accumulate in the ER lumen.  Prolonged or intense ER stress contributes to the pathogenesis of a variety of glomerular and tubular diseases in humans, such as congenital nephrotic syndrome, familial focal segmental […]

Ying (Maggie) Chen MD, PhD and Andrew Malone MD are recipients of the inaugural Translational Innovation Grant. Their proposal entitled, “Targeting Podocyte Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress in Alport Syndrome,” aims to identify pathogenic mutations in collagen genes that lead to Alport’s syndrome. They will utilize whole-exome sequencing to identify patients with mutations, in collaboration with the […]

Ying (Maggie) Chen, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Renal Division, has been awarded a Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Grant. The award is one of several that Dr. Chen has received in 2015, including an R03 grant from the NIH/NIDDK, an Early Career Development Award from the Central Society for Clinical and Translational Research (CSCTR) […]

Ying (Maggie) Chen MD, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine (Renal), has been selected as a recipient of a 2015 Early Career Development Award from the Central Society for Clinical and Translational Research. Maggie was one of five recipients to earn this award. Three awards went to the University of Chicago and one […]