News

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.

Congratulations to Assistant Professor of Medicine Ying (Maggie) Chen, MD, PhD, who has been awarded a five-year $1.52M total costs, R01 grant from the NIH to fund a research project titled Podocyte Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress and Nephrotic Syndrome. Nephrotic syndrome (NS), characterized by heavy proteinuria and increased risk of loss of kidney function, causes serious […]

A review article by the group of Ying Maggie Chen, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Washington University School of Medicine, Division of Nephrology, was published as part of the Featured New Investigator series in the journal Translational Research. The article, Mesencephalic astrocyte-derived neurotrophic factor (MANF), a new player in endoplasmic reticulum diseases: structure, biology, […]

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 […]