Patricio E. Ray, MD

Patricio E. Ray, received his medical degree at the University of Buenos Aires School of Medicine in Argentina in 1980, winning the Gold Medal for obtaining the best grades of all medical students of his class during the six years of medical school. After completing his residency in Pediatrics at the Hospital de Niños Ricardo Gutierrez, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he served as Chief Resident at the same hospital, followed by research and clinical fellowships in Pediatric Intensive Care and Nephrology at the University of California San Francisco (1985-1987), under the supervision of doctors Macolm Holliday and Donald Potter.  He then worked as a Visiting Scientist at NIH, Bethesda Maryland, in the Laboratory of Clinical Pharmacology (1988-1989), and the Laboratory of Developmental Biology (1990 -1993).  Subsequently, in 1994, Dr. Ray joined the faculty of The George Washington University and Children’s National Medical Center in Washington DC.  He then established one of the first pediatric nephrology research program in the country focusing on studying the pathogenesis and clinical care of HIV-kidney diseases in children and adolescents living with HIV. This program received uninterrupted funding from several NIH institutes since 1994. During the following years, Dr. Ray became a tenured Professor of Pediatrics at The George Washington University and received the Robert Parrott Chair in Pediatric Research at Children’s National Hospital in 2006. In 2019 he joined the Faculty at the University of Virginia as a Medical Alumni Professor of Pediatrics and became a member of the Child and Health Institute in 2019. Dr. Ray has authored more than 125 peer reviewed original publications primarily focused on study the pathogenesis of pediatric kidney diseases, with a special emphasis on exploring the role of heparin binding growth factors regulating renal growth, vascular permeability, and progression of childhood renal diseases.

Selected recent publications

1. Das JR, Jerebsova M, Tang P, Li J, Yu Y. Ray PE. Circulating Fibroblast Growth Factor-2 precipitates HIV-nephropathy in mice. Dis Model Mech. (2021) 14, dmm048980. doi:10.1242/dmm.048980. PMCID:PMC8326767. (Selected as the “Editor’s Choice”, July 2021 issue)
2. Beng H, Rakhmanina N, Moudgil A, Tuchman S, Ahn S-Y, Griffith C, Moxey-Mims M, Ray PE.  HIV-associated CKD in children and adolescents. Kidney Int Rep. 8:2292-2300,2020. doi: 10.1016/jkir.2020.09.001. PMCID: PMC7710839.
3. Tang P, Das JR, Li J, Yu J, Ray PE. An HIV-Tat inducible mouse model system of childhood HIV-associated nephropathy. Dis Model Mech. 2020 Oct 28;13(10): dmm045641. doi: 10.1242/dmm. 045641. 2020. PMCID:PMC7648609
4. Li J, Das JR, Tang P, Han Z, Jaiswal JK, Ray PE. Transmembrane TNF-α Facilitates HIV-1 Infection of Podocytes Cultured from Children with HIV-Associated Nephropathy. J Am Soc Nephrol. 28: 862-875, 2017 PMCID:PMC5328167
5. Fu Y, Zhu JY, Richman A, Zhang Y, Xie X, Das JR, Li J, Ray PE*, Han Z*. APOL1-G1 in Nephrocytes Induces Hypertrophy and Accelerates Cell Death. J Am Soc Nephrol. 28: 1106-1116, 2017. PMCID: PMC5373456 * co-correspondent author.
6. Das JR, Gutkind JS, Ray PE. Circulating Fibroblast Growth Factor-2, HIV-Tat, and Vascular Endothelial Cell Growth Factor-A in HIV-Infected Children with Renal Disease Activate Rho-A and Src in Cultured Renal Endothelial Cells. PLoS One. 11:e0153837, 2016 doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0153837. PMCID: PMC4838216
7. Perazzo S, Revenis M, Massaro A, Short BL, Ray PE. A new approach to recognize neonatal impaired kidney.  Kidney Int Rep. 2020 5:2301-2312, 2020. doi: 10.1016/j.ekir.2020.09.043. PMCID: PMC7710891
8. Jerebtsova M, Das JR, Tang P, Wong E, Ray PE. Angiopoietin-1 prevents severe bleeding complications induced by heparin-like drugs and fibroblast growth factor-2 in mice. Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol. 309: H1314-325, 2015. PMCID: PMC4666966
9. Xie, X, Colberg-Poley AM, Das JR, Li J, Zhang A, Tang P, Jerebtsova M, Gutkind JS, Ray PE. The basic domain of HIV-tat transactivating protein is essential for its targeting to lipid rafts and regulating fIbroblast growth factor-2 signaling in podocytes isolated from children with HIV-1 associated nephropathy. JASN 2014, 25: 1800-1813. PMCID: PMC4116058.