Roderick Tan
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a slow loss of kidney function that affects more than 35 million Americans. It can progress to complete kidney failure, which requires dialysis or a transplant.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Physiology
Neuroscience
- Topics
chronic kidney disease
renal nerves
renal denervation
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2027
What they work on
- Measure how the activity of renal nerves changes across different forms of chronic kidney disease, using several mouse models of CKD.
- Test whether renal denervation, cutting the nerves that link the kidney to the nervous system, slows CKD progression, preserves kidney function and reduces hypertension in mouse models of CKD.
- Determine the relative contributions of sensory (afferent) nerves, which carry signals from the kidney, and sympathetic (efferent) nerves, which carry signals to it, to kidney damage and high blood pressure in CKD.
- Identify the mediators that activate renal sensory nerves during CKD, testing the hypothesis that inflammation in the kidney triggers the rise in nerve activity.
More about the research
Most patients take drugs that block the renin-angiotensin system (a hormone pathway that raises blood pressure) or SGLT2 (a sugar transporter in the kidney), but these drugs protect only partly. One possible new target is the kidney's own nerves. Their activity rises in CKD and can drive high blood pressure, reduced kidney function, protein leaking into the urine, and faster disease progression.
Why it matters
Current CKD drugs only partly slow the disease, and many patients still reach dialysis or transplantation. By testing which forms of kidney disease respond to renal denervation, the work could support extending this procedure to CKD patients who are excluded from current trials, such as those without high blood pressure or with advanced disease. It may also point to inflammatory signals that drive harmful nerve activity in the kidney.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jeanie Park
Emory University, GA·Physiology
Test whether eight weeks of mindfulness-based stress reduction produces sustained reductions in muscle sympathetic nerve activity, recorded by microneurography, that are linked to lower daytime blood pressure and restored nighttime blood pressure dipping in patients with chronic kidney disease.
Qandeel Soomro
New York University, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Deeply profile autonomic nervous system dysfunction across stages of chronic kidney disease using a comprehensive battery of autonomic tests, both cross-sectionally and over time, to test whether dysfunction shifts from parasympathetic to sympathetic as CKD advances.
Clintoria Williams
Wright State University, OH·Physiology
Test whether zinc supplementation in early CKD restores zinc balance, limits kidney sodium reabsorption, lowers blood pressure and slows disease in calcineurin inhibitor-treated mice and Akita diabetic kidney disease mice.
The school
University of Pittsburgh: 83 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 403 research doctorates a year.
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