Medical Student Research Fellowship for Summer 2006

Mentor: Robert D. Toto
Department: Internal Medicine/Nephrology
Room number: H5.122
Mail Code: 8856
Phone number: x83442
E-mail: Robert.toto@utsouthwestern.edu
Project title:

Human subjects IRB approved project number:

Animal subjects IRB approved project number (where applicable):

Project Type: patient-based research

Brief Description of Project:

The broad long-term objective of this project is to develop a novel proteomic technology as a discovery tool in nephrology and apply it to diabetic nephropathy. Diabetic nephropathy is the most common cause of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) in the United States. A major stumbling block in understanding and treating kidney disease in diabetes is the lack of a precise method for detecting kidney disease, its severity and propensity for progression. Whereas proteomic technology has been widely used in oncology and neurology, there is scant utilization of this powerful tool in the field of nephrology. Several studies have demonstrated unique transcriptomes in urine of patients with diabetes and albuminuria; however, the methods employed have been limited by lack of data on normal controls and consistent findings among patients. As a result, this approach has not yet identified clinically useful biomarkers of disease activity or new insight into disease mechanisms.

The specific aims of this project are:

1) To recruit 30 normal subjects and 30 patients with diabetic nephropathy and 30 patients with diabetes but no nephropathy and obtain 5 daily consecutive plasma and urine samples collected for proteomic analysis.

2) To establish reliability of measurement of plasma and urine proteomes in the three study populations in specific aim 1.

3) To analyze urine and serum protein expression profiles of three different groups of diabetics with nephropathy utilizing banked serum and urine samples taken at baseline and as 12, 24, and 48 weeks during treatment in 92 participants of an ongoing clinical trial.

Ideally, this project will provide new insight into mechanisms of disease and yield clinically useful data that would have diagnostic, therapeutic, or prognostic implications for diabetic nephropathy.

Research Activities or Publications with Medical Students:
Clinical trial of diabetic nephropathy
Acute renal failure phase 1 clinical trial
Mechanisms of dyslipidemia in kidney disease

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