Updates by Specialty Division
Nephrology
The Division of Nephrology and Hypertension is committed to the research, treatment and prevention of kidney diseases, including acute and chronic renal failure, complications of chronic dialysis treatment, hypertension, and kidney stones and cystic disease.
Led by Sharon Moe, MD, the division is one of the largest in the U.S. It holds a diverse group of 54 faculty members, including clinicians, physician scientists, PhDs, and volunteers. Faculty are active leaders in the American Society of Nephrology, National Kidney Foundation and Renal Physicians Association.
The division provide clinical care at six major hospitals, see nearly 26,769 patients in clinics per year, more than 8,000 acute inpatient consults per year, and have more than 1,000 outpatient dialysis patients at 21 different units, specializing in home therapies. Its kidney transplant program performs nearly 300 transplants per year, specializing in highly sensitized patients. The division has over $14 million in extramural research, with a diverse portfolio of NIH-funded laboratory and clinical research, Veterans Affairs funding, industry/foundation funded trials and investigator-initiated support. We are home to seven center grants, including NIH funded Kidney Precision Medicine Program (KPMP), O’Brien Center, and The Human BioMolecular Atlas Program (HuBMAP), and Musculoskeletal Clinical Research Center.
The Division of Nephrology offers two fellowship programs: a categorical fellowship in nephrology and transplant nephrology and home dialysis fellowships. Fellows manage a combination of common and rare renal diseases among a diverse patient population at IU School of Medicine clinical facilities in Indianapolis as part of leading nephrology programs in the United States.
News from 2023-24
Researchers using AI to detect root of kidney disease causes
Two Indiana University researchers are developing new ways of detecting the root of kidney disease causes using artificial intelligence data sequencing, thanks to a nearly $1.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.
Juexin Wang, assistant professor of bioinformatics in the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering at IUPUI, and Dr. Michael Eadon, associate professor of medicine in the IU School of Medicine, will use novel AI data-sequencing technology to see what happens in the kidneys on a single-cell level, offering important insight into why kidney disease develops.
The researchers first hope to develop a deep-learning framework with detailed heterogeneous kidney spatial transcriptomics, which is data that takes a picture of where different genes are active in specific locations within tissues or organs. They will apply the new methods to publicly available kidney spatial transcriptomic data with the hopes of finding useful molecular signatures in kidney injuries.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in seven adults in the United States suffer from chronic kidney disease. Read More.
Nephrology researchers create cellular map of human kidney, showing tissue in unprecedented detail
IU School of Medicine researchers have helped shed important light on the cellular makeup of the human kidney in both healthy and diseased states—findings that could help scientists identify new targets for early detection of and better treatments for kidney disease. They also found a correlation between kidney papillary injury, two molecules in the urine and the presence of kidney stone disease. Their work was recently published in Nature and Nature Communications.
The studies are part of two collaborative research efforts funded by the National Institutes of Health: the Human BioMolecular Atlas Program (HuBMAP) and the Kidney Precision Medicine Project (KPMP). As leading experts in both imaging and nephrology, IU School of Medicine researchers are key investigators on these efforts, which include scientists from around the United States and Europe. Read More.
Noteworthy Awards and Recognitions
Takashi Hato, MD
Showalter Scholar Award, Grace M. Showalter Trust
Michael Eadon, MD
Distinguished Research Award, American Society of Nephrology
Amanda Galbraith, MPA, Division Administrator
2023 Deb Cowley Staff Leadership Award, IU School of Medicine