Eun Ji Chung
Northwestern University, IL·Biomedical Engineering
The human kidney contains millions of tiny filtering units called nephrons. Single-cell studies now show that these units hold many distinct cell types arranged in complex patterns.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Medicine & Clinical Research
Chemistry
- Topics
kidney disease
nephrology
nephron
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2028
What they work on
- Develop nanomedicine approaches, engineered nanoparticles, to deliver short RNAs that silence specific genes to the kidney, as a pilot project in the core's technology incubator.
- Build microfluidic platforms, chips that handle tiny fluid volumes, for high-throughput genome screens that identify therapeutic targets in kidney cells.
- Advance platforms for spatial proteoform mapping, which locate specific protein forms across kidney tissue, and validate these new resources before sharing them with kidney researchers.
More about the research
This complexity has made it hard to develop and deliver treatments for kidney disease. Tools from the physical sciences, such as nanomedicine, bioengineering and chemistry, could help, but kidney researchers rarely use them. This grant supports a Resource Development Core within a Northwestern University national resource center. The core aims to bring these physical-science tools into kidney research.
Why it matters
Kidney diseases are hard to treat partly because drugs struggle to reach the right cells within the kidney's complex structure. Tools from this core, such as nanoparticles that deliver RNA to the kidney, chip-based screens for drug targets and maps of proteins across kidney tissue, could help researchers find and deliver new therapies for patients with kidney disease.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Alex Hughes
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Biomedical Engineering
Map how tissue mechanics and cell-cell signaling jointly shape epithelial tissue in kidney and lung organoids, using independent optogenetic (light-controlled) handles to control organoid cell composition.
Feng Guo
Indiana University, IN·Biomedical Engineering
Integrate digital acoustofluidics, which uses sound to move droplets held in oil, with AI-guided closed-loop image feedback to generate droplets of controlled volume, transport them in parallel, and fuse and mix them on demand.
Paul Welling
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Physiology
Test whether regulated expression of the ROMK potassium channel in the DCT2 and connecting tubule segments controls body potassium balance, using mice in which ROMK can be switched off in specific cell types.
The school
Northwestern University: 71 labs on PI Pages, $1.3B a year on research, 536 research doctorates a year.
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