Brigham and Women’s Hospital has been on the forefront of nephrology for decades: in 1954, the hospital was the site of the first successful living-donor kidney transplant. Today, the Brigham continues its legacy of innovation in kidney dialysis research and care through its Interventional Nephrology service at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital, one of the few programs of its kind in the country.

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Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital are collaborating with colleagues at Harvard Medical School to examine the use of gene therapy for treating four age-related diseases: obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart failure and kidney failure.

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It can be challenging to assess the effects of dietary changes on a disease, especially when those changes involve eliminating common, often beloved foods from a child’s diet. However, Leonardo D. Riella, MD, PhD, FASN, associate director of kidney transplantation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, found a way to make the elimination process both effective from a research perspective and fun for a group of young kidney disease patients.
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Study identifies key factor leading to cell cycle arrest and a cellular structure that is key for kidney fibrosis progression.
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In the 1960s, Brigham and Women’s Hospital pioneered the development and commercialization of dialysis. Once again, the Brigham is on the forefront of renal replacement therapy (RRT) through a new project spearheaded by the Kidney Health Initiative (KHI), a public-private partnership between the American Society of Nephrology (ASN), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, patients, academia and industry to identify and create solutions for vexing problems in kidney disease.

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End-stage kidney disease patients on dialysis need to continue dialysis to stay alive. To reduce the pain and common worries in their final phase of life, they also need access to hospice care. Unfortunately, Medicare patients with end-stage kidney disease often can’t have both.
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In the search of a practical screening method for early-stage renal cell cancer (RCC), researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital have been studying the potential of kidney injury molecule-1 (KIM-1). Their latest research was published in Clinical Cancer Research and represents the first time that KIM-1 was assessed in pre-diagnostic samples.
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A new electronic health record (EHR) tool could help physicians quickly and accurately flag patients that should be referred to a nephrologist based on indicators that may signal the risk of kidney failure. Designed by Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) investigators, this tool draws upon recent research that has identified several tests that can be used to calculate an individual’s risk score. Now, an automatic calculator can be built into EHRs and displayed prominently for a physician to see when they open a patient’s record. The paper detailing the design and implementation of the application appeared online in the July 2017, issue of The Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. Read More

Managing acute kidney injury (AKI) can be challenging, in part because evidence about when to begin treatment — namely, dialysis and other forms of renal replacement therapy that artificially filter the blood — is quite limited and offers conflicting perspectives. Read More

When the kidneys – vital organs for filtering the body’s entire blood supply – become injured, it can set in motion an unfortunate chain of events that leads to a decline in health. Sometimes, in response to chronic injury, the body begins an aberrant repair process known as fibrosis, in which normal fibroblast cells transform into myofibroblasts, proliferate out of control, migrate and form scar tissue. Once scar tissue begins to form, functional cells begin to die, and the scar tissue multiplies. Investigators have been looking for a way to break this cycle, and new findings indicate that a gene known as SMOC2 may point the way to a new intervention that could prevent this cascade of events. Read More