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Core Center for Acute Kidney Injury Research
(NIH Grant number:P30 DK079337)

(http://www.OBrienAKI.org)

Center Director:
Anupam Agarwal, M.D., University of Alabama at Birmingham

Center Associate Directors:
Paul W. Sanders, M.D., University of Alabama at Birmingham
Ravindra L. Mehta, M.D., University of California, San Diego

The George M. O’Brien centers were established in 1987 as NIH-funded interdisciplinary research centers in kidney and urological diseases.  The centers are named after George M. O’Brien (1917-1986) who was a former member of the United States House of Representatives and succumbed to prostate cancer in 1986.

The UAB-UCSD O’Brien Core Center for Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) is one of 8 centers funded nationwide and is an interdisciplinary center of excellence in AKI-related research. The main objective of this core center is to provide scientifically rigorous, state-of-the-art methodologies in a cost-effective manner to address experimental questions that will advance our understanding of the pathophysiology of AKI, enhance our diagnostic specificity and expand our therapeutic and preventive approaches for AKI, specifically in the intensive care unit and in the setting of kidney transplantation.

This objective will be implemented in three specific aims:

  1. Facilitate hypothesis-driven research through the support of shared core facilities and to leverage these core technologies into new projects, interactions and collaborations in AKI-related research,
  2. Foster meaningful interactions among UAB-UCSD investigators from several different disciplines and extend these interactions to include a cadre of investigators from multiple institutions at the regional, national and international levels – an extended research base and
  3. Provide, through the Biomedical Research Cores, a Pilot and Feasibility Program (PAF) and the Scientific Enrichment program, the intellectual resources and the research infrastructure to attract new and established investigators to AKI research.

The core center investigators will benefit from access to a set of complementary Biomedical Research Core Resources that will integrate existing intellectual and technological resources of UAB and UCSD and provide defined services that will facilitate the research of investigators pursuing AKI-related basic and clinical investigation.

The cores are:

  1. Administrative Core:
  2. Biomedical Research Cores:
  3. Core A - Resource for Clinical Studies of AKI (Clinical Research, Genomics and Biorepository)

    Director
    Ravindra L. Mehta, M.D.

    Co-Directors
    Daniel O’Connor, M.D.

    4. Kumar Sharma, M.D.

  4. Core B - Resource for Pre-Clinical Studies of AKI (Animal Models, Small Animal Imaging and Physiology)

    Director
    Paul W. Sanders, M.D.
    psanders@uab.edu

    Co-Directors
    Kurt Zinn, Ph.D.
    kurtzinn@uab.edu

    5. James George, Ph.D.
    jgeorge@uab.edu
     
    Roland Blantz, M.D.
    rblantz@ucsd.edu

  5. Core C - Bioanalytical Resource (Proteomics/Oxidative stress Markers/Molecular Pathology)

    6. Director 
    Stephen Barnes, Ph.D
    sbarnes@uab.edu

    Co-Directors:
    Victor Darley-Usmar, Ph.D.
    darley@uab.edu

    Daniel Sharer, Ph.D.
    dsharer@genetics.uab.edu

    Gene Siegal, M.D., Ph.D.
    gsiegal@uab.edu

  6. Biostatistical/Bioinformatics Resource

    7. Director 
    Gary Cutter, Ph.D
    cutterg@uab.edu

The center also includes a Pilot and Feasibility Grants Programand anEducational Enrichment Program.