Overall - Project Summary
Kidney diseases in general and acute kidney injury (AKI) in particular impose substantial morbidity and
mortality that remain unabated despite concerted efforts in recent decades to reduce both. The overall mission
of the UAB-UCSD O’Brien Center for AKI Research is to improve the health of patients by fostering research
specifically targeted to the prevention and treatment of AKI and its complications. To achieve this mission,
our two institution-based Center crosses institutional boundaries and research fields, harnessing the
momentum and ingenuity of ongoing pre-clinical and clinical research in each of our institutions and nationally.
In this application to become a National Resource Center (NRC) in the O’Brien Kidney Consortium, our theme-
based Center proposes to share and combine resources, methods, innovations, and other expertise with the
other NRCs, under the guidance of the Steering Committee, National Coordinating Center, and NIDDK, to
attract new scientific expertise into the field and coordinate and prioritize resource development and
innovative services that are most essential to the Consortium. The following aims are proposed: (1) Integrate
our O’Brien Center into the Consortium to accelerate the pace of AKI-related research through the support of
shared Core facilities and expertise while ensuring quality assurance/quality control, rigor, and reproducibility
for the Core services; (2) Foster meaningful interactions among investigators in the Consortium; (3) Through
the NCC and the Consortium, share the Center’s intellectual resources and infrastructure to expand the
diversity of investigators in AKI-related research, with an emphasis on early-stage investigators; (4) Utilize
our Resource Development Core to respond to the evolving needs of investigators through promotion of
innovative lines of investigation in AKI-related research; (5) Develop tomorrow’s thought leaders through our
Summer Student Training Program; and (6) Leverage our substantial institutional commitments to propel the
development of AKI-related research within the Consortium. The proposed Biomedical Research Cores (a
Clinical Core and a Pre-clinical Core) and Resource Development Core will integrate existing intellectual and
technological resources to provide the Consortium a set of services/resources for innovative investigation in
AKI-related research. Our Clinical Core will uniquely build upon established networks and infrastructure in
clinical AKI research, including a large biospecimen collection, and through the use of a collaborative digital
workspace, enhance these resources and make them readily available to the Consortium. Simultaneously,
our Pre-Clinical Core will uniquely provide the breadth of expertise, experimental tools, and resources to help
investigators overcome barriers to the utilization of relevant rodent models and advance understanding of the
pathophysiology of AKI. To advance both realms, our Resource Development Core will provide a dynamic
platform to develop, test, and refine innovations, including new analytical approaches in metabolomics and
functional in vivo imaging and tools for federated machine learning using big electronic health record data.