The Johns Hopkins O’Brien Center to Advance Kidney Health Equity
Summary
The overarching goal of the Johns Hopkins O’Brien Center to Advance Kidney Health Equity is to serve as a national resource for investigators conducting pre-clinical (basic), clinical or population health research addressing or related to kidney health disparities, and to make recommendations to inform strategies, interventions, and approaches aimed at achieving kidney health equity. The resources and services available from the Johns Hopkins O’Brien Center (JHOC) support this overarching goal.
Biomedical Resource Core (BRC)
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Description
The Biomedical Resource Core (BRC) provides a portfolio of research services, resources, and tools to understand and ameliorate disparities in kidney disease, with a focus on dietary and social stressors that drive kidney health disparities. The BRC is comprised of two laboratories, detailed below, which provide services and resources for the conduct of pre-clinical, clinical and population research relevant to advancing kidney health equity,
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Services
- Clinical Science Dietary and Social Stressor Laboratory (C-DSSL) Services
Through a health equity lens, the C-DSSL will provide consultative services, validated protocols with well-established quality assurance/quality control procedures, and access to materials and equipment, with appropriate external resources. The C-DSSL will execute pilot studies or larger research projects and potential access to our community-based clinical research unit. Resources and services include the following:
- Clinical study design
- Dietary assessment and Dietary data
- Feeding studies modeled on the DASH trials
- Archived and Completed studies
- Large longitudinal cohort study data from racially and socioeconomically diverse populations
- Publicly available datasets
- EMR registries
- Datasets with Deep phenotyping
- Genomics
- Proteomics
- Metabolomics
- Images
- Samples
- Stored biospecimens from completed studies
- Healthy Volunteers for Reference Range
- Prospective Remnant Sample collection
- Behavioral intervention studies
- Translational studies in the community
- Biostatistical support
- Biomarker measurement
- Immunoassays
- Clinical Chemistry
- Biorepository support
- Processing aliquoting, short- and long-term sample storage
- Processing aliquoting, short- and long-term sample storage
- Basic Science Dietary and Social Stressor Laboratory (B-DSSL)
The B-DSSL will provide investigators with comprehensive services and resources for preclinical research to determine the mechanistic underpinnings of human health disparity stressors, using mice as a model system. Resources and services include the following:
- Study design
- Humanized mouse diet protocols
- Comprehensive mouse kidney phenotyping for diet and stress mechanisms
Metabolic Cage and Clearance Studies
GFR measurements
Telemetric Blood pressure Monitoring
Optical Clearing
Isolated Nephron segment Ex Vivo Analysis
Small Sample RNAseq in Isolated Nephron Segments - Indirect calorimetry and Lipid and carbohydrate metabolism phenotyping
Oxymax and CLAMS metaboic cages to mointor food intake, water intake, physical activity, metabolic rate (VO2), respiratory exchange ratio (carbohydrate vs fat oxidation), and energy expenditure
- Immunological manifestations of dietary and social stressors in the kidney
protocols, training, and service to isolate and characterize kidney immune cells by flow cytometric analysis (FACS).
- Microbiome; germ-free sample banks
- Mouse biobank of dietary and social stress models
- Clinical Science Dietary and Social Stressor Laboratory (C-DSSL) Services
Contact Information
If you would like more information regarding services provided by Johns Hopkins O’Brien Center to Advance Kidney Health Equity, please contact:
Mary Ann Stephens