Clinical and Basic Research

Division of Nephrology and Center for Immunity, Inflammation, and Regenerative Medicine (CIIR) at the University of Virginia is comprised of physicians and scientists with research expertise in immunology, physiology, molecular and cell biology, transplant immunobiology, metabolism, regenerative and translational medicine. Affiliated CIIR members from various departments throughout the School of Medicine collaborate to bring added expertise.

Division of Nephrology and CIIR supports state-of-the-art research facilities to conduct innovative basic, clinical, translational, data science and epidemiological research aiming to advance the knowledge for understanding and discovering novel mechanisms to prevent, better diagnose and treat a wide range of kidney diseases. A number of our research scientists serve as mentors of the Division’s T32 NIH Training Grant entitled “Kidney Disease and Inflammation”, which is focused on training the next generation investigators. Details of our training grant can be found here.

Division has a long-standing record of sustained research funding from government and private entities. Currently funded projects are listed here.

Learn more about investigators, their team and the research projects by visiting their individual pages.

Research Areas

Inflammation, fibrosis, the progression of kidney disease, acute kidney injury (AKI)

Research Summary

• Immune Mechanisms of Acute Kidney Injury – We have focused our attention on the immunopathogenesis of acute kidney injury.
• Microenvironment in AKI and AKI to CKD Transition. Our interest in the microenvironment began with our studies with adenosine receptors.
• Sphingolipids in Kidney Disease. A second target that we have focused our attention on is the sphingolipid pathway.
• Neuroimmunomodulation in Acute Kidney Injury. We study the inflammatory reflex, a neuro-immune circuit is critical for immunological homeostasis.
• Photoacoustic Microscopy. In collaboration with Song Hu, PhD. Department of Biomedical Engineering, we have embarked on a high-resolution method of measuring peritubular capillary oxygenation that will permit the characterization of kidney tubular bioenergetics following acute kidney injury.

Research Areas
Geriatric Nephrology, acute kidney injury; in-center hemodialysis, home hemodialysis, clinical trials.

Research Areas
Innate immunity, Cell clearance, Inflammatory and autoimmune disease

Research Summary
The Arandjelovic laboratory research focus is on cell clearance in inflammatory disease, using rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and multiple sclerosis (MS) as model systems. Inflammatory states are associated with high rates of cell death, mostly through apoptosis, and the clearance of apoptotic cells is a critical step in disease pathology. However, the cellular identity of phagocytes and the molecular events that contribute to the clearance of apoptotic cells has been understudied in many inflammatory diseases. In other words, “who” are the cleaning crew and which “tools” are they using?

Research Areas
Mobile health technology and kidney disease, anemia of chronic kidney disease, applied health analytics

Research Areas
Cancer Immunology, Genetics of Virus Immunity, Host Defense Mechanisms, Host-Pathogen Interaction, Natural Killer (NK) Cells, Role of NK Cells in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC).

Research Summary
Natural Killer Cells, Viral Immunity, Genetic basis of host resistance to viral infection, Tumor Immunity, Immune cell regulation.

Research Areas
Acute and Chronic kidney disease

Research Summary
In the last ten years my scientific work has been done in the field of nephrology and hypertension to study effect of several genes, namely Gstm1, Myh9 and Collectrin on the severity and progression of chronic kidney disease and hypertension.

Research Areas
Extracellular Vesicles novel bio-markers and bio-activators in HTN and Kidney disease.

Research Summary
The Erdbrügger Lab is interested in studying the fascinating role of extracellular vesicles (EVs) as novel bio-markers and bio-activators in kidney disease and high blood pressure. EVs are a very heterogeneous group of small vesicles that can derive from all cells in the body either by secretion or blebbing of cell membranes.

Research Summary
Autoimmunity in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Autoimmunity plays an important role in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The emphasis of my laboratory is on the genetic and environmental factors important for these disorders.

Research Areas
Immune System Modulation

Research Summary
Nephrology-CIIR Core, three sub cores: Small Animal Micro-Surgery Core, Bioanalytical Core to discover and analyze novel biomarkers, Biorepository core for Nephrology clinical sample storage

Research Areas
Basic Transplant Immunology; Role of Naturally occurring IgM antibodies in Acute Kidney Injury and transplant rejection.

Research Summary
My basic research involves investigating the role of naturally occurring IgM autoantibodies that bind to receptors on inflammatory cells and endothelial cells.

Research Areas
Survival Analysis; longitudinal data analysis; latent variable analysis and mixture modeling; clinical trial design; Outcomes research

Research Summary
Understand, at the cellular level, the mechanisms leading to proximal tubule cell death during Acute Kidney Injury(AKI).

Research Areas

• Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology
• Outcomes Research in Patients with End-Stage Kidney Disease
• Complications of Chronic Kidney Disease: Bone and Mineral Metabolism; Metabolic Acidosis
• Nutrition in Kidney Disease

Research Summary
The goal of our research program is to develop approaches to prevent and treat kidney disease and its complications. Chronic kidney disease (CKD)

Research Summary

• Modulating homeostasis of immune-regulatory lymphocytes: Regulatory T cells (Treg) exert the major mechanism of peripheral tolerance. Treg deficiency causes early mortality in mice and humans.
• PD-1 pathway and T-regulatory cells in Acute Kidney Injury: This is an NIH funded collaborative project between the Sharma Lab, Dr. Gilbert Kinsey, and Dr. Didier Portilla. Acute kidney injury (AKI) complicates at least 5% of all hospitalizations and up to 30% of cardiac surgeries.
• Circulating Renal Protective Mediators in Cardiac Surgery Patients: Acute kidney injury (AKI) after cardiac surgery requiring cardiopulmonary bypass occurs in up to 1/3 of patients. The pathogenesis of AKI involves ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI).
• TREX1 pathway in autoimmune diseases: The Sharma lab is also involved in understanding the role of defective clearance of DNA from necrotic and apoptotic cells in the pathophysiology of autoimmune diseases.

Research Areas
Macrophages, dendritic cells, and other myeloid cells interactions with glomerular parenchymal cells.

Research Summary
Lupus nephritis is an autoimmune disease manifesting as compromised kidney function.

Research Areas
Role of programmed cell death in kidney injury

Research Summary
My primary research focus includes regulation of programmed cell death (e.g. necroptosis, pyroptosis and apoptosis). After a brief post-doctoral stint my graduate thesis lab to complete some projects and publications (Blood 2012, Journal of Cell Biology 2014, Oncogene 2016), I moved to the University of Virginia as a Senior Research Scientist, focusing on identifying the endogenous regulatory pathways that control clearance of apoptotic cells (also termed ‘efferocytosis’).

Research Areas
Clinical epidemiology, outcomes research, and racial/ethnic disparities; Models for survival, longitudinal and clustered data.

Research Summary
We have been conducting outcomes and epidemiologic research in kidney disease.

Research Areas
Acute kidney injury

Research Summary
Regulation of acute kidney injury and progression to fibrosis. In Okusa lab I focus on how neuro-immune interplay following pulse ultrasound/vogues nerve stimulation protects the kidney against ischemia damage.