Professor of Medicine and Surgery
Director of Research, Alabama Transplant Center

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Education

MD, Duke University Medical School in Durham, North Carolina
Internship (Internal Medicine), Duke University Medical School in Durham, North Carolina
Residency (Internal Medicine), Duke University Medical School in Durham, North Carolina
Fellowship (Nephrology), Duke University Medical School in Durham, North Carolina
Chief Resident, Department of Medicine, Duke University Medical School in Durham, North Carolina

Research Interests

Long term kidney graft failure continues to be a difficult problem in spite of potent immunosuppressive strategies with improved acute rejection rates and short term graft survivals.  This is due both to death with a functioning allograft and the associated co-morbidities of kidney failure, as well as primary graft failure.  The leading cause of late graft dysfunction and failure is due to a pathological entity characterized by allograft fibrosis and tubular atrophy (IF/TA), a disease with both immunological and non-immunological etiologies, and no specific therapies.  To this end, we have developed an active research program in kidney and kidney/pancreas transplantation that spans the spectrum of basic science, translational studies, and clinical research.

Our Transplant Clinical Research Center provides the personnel and infrastructure to engage not only in pharmaceutical-based studies, but supports clinical studies in transplantation that are investigator initiated and sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.  Our current studies include investigating the clinical etiologies of kidney allograft failure (NIAID), the genomics of early and late allograft injury (NIAID), immune monitoring after depletional induction therapies (Immune Tolerance Network) and major clinical interventional immunosuppression trials (Clinical Trials in Organ Transplantation—CTOT) sponsored by NIAID.

The long term goal of our laboratory is to identify new mechanisms and associated biomarkers in the detection and treatment of IF/TA.  Utilizing rodent models of kidney and heart transplantation and models of calcineurin inhibitor toxicity, we study the cellular, molecular, and physiologic events following transplantation. We have used these models as platforms for translation into our human patients following kidney transplantation through a broad series of analytical techniques including genomics and proteomics.