UAB-UCSD O’Brien Center for Acute Kidney Injury Research
Summary
The University of Alabama at Birmingham – University of California at San Diego (UAB-UCSD) O’Brien Center for Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) Research is an interdisciplinary center of excellence in AKI-related research. 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. The two Biomedical Research Cores (a Clinical Core and a Pre-clinical Core) and Resource Development Core integrate existing intellectual and technological resources to provide the Consortium a set of services/resources for innovative investigation in AKI-related research.
Clinical Core
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Description
The Clinical Core catalyzes the translation of bench discoveries to applications that impact human AKI. They achieve this through providing access to curated clinical data from prior clinical studies and new harmonized real world multimodal data from electronic health records (EHR) to support epidemiological studies of AKI and clinical research, including AKI risk-classification, sub-phenotyping, and simulated trials. They also have access to biospecimens from prior studies hosted by the core. Below is a list of detailed services provided by this core:
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Services
- AKI Biological Sample Repository
- AKI Clinical Study Initiation and Conduct
- AKI Epidemiological Study Initiation and Conduct
- AKI Study Analysis and Interpretation
- AKI Study Planning and Design
- Analyses of study results
- Analysis of pilot data
- Assistance with manuscript development or publication support
- Big data transformation & pipeline development
- Cloud-based multimodal databases for AKI and critical care nephrology research studies
- Data Safety and Monitoring
- Database development
- Design of epidemiological, clinical studies or clinical trials
- Forms, manual of operations, and/or instrument development
- Methodologies and Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Health
- Sample size and/or power analysis
Pre-Clinical Core
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Description
The Pre-Clinical Core provides the facilities and requisite skills (Animal Models Resource) to generate and study murine models of AKI and provides unique facilities and requisite skills (Renal Physiology Resource) to determine renal physiological changes in AKI. Pre-Clinical s Core services include:
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Services
- 5/6th nephrectomy (both steps)
- Assistance with manuscript development or publication support
- Automated tail-cuff blood pressure determination (each, 6 days)
- Bulk RNA seq
- Bulk RNA seq - from Fastq to analyses
- Bulk RNA seq - sample to analyses
- Bulk RNA seq training (per day)
- Cannulation (indwelling with injection port)
- Determination of GFR in awake rodents
- Functional renal imaging (tracer dependent, per hour)
- GFR (transcutaneous FITC-sinistrin) in rodents
- Image Analysis
- Kidney ischemia/reperfusion (IRI)
- Laser Capture Microdissection from frozen tissue (~70 pieces individually collected per sample; sample quality and amount appropriate for RNA-Seq or potentially proteomics)
- LC-MS/MS Creatinine determination (per test)
- Metabolic cage experiments in mice (per animal and week)
- Micropuncture for nephron function and TG feedback
- Misc. surgical services involving body wall penetration (per hour)
- Nuclear imaging (Gamma camera, SPECT/CT, PET/CT) (per hour)
- Optical Imaging (Bioluminescence, Fluorescence) (per hour)
- Orthotopic kidney transplantation
- Radio-telemetry determination of blood pressure
- Structural and metabolic imaging (US, MRI, microCT) (per hour)
- Tail vein injection or venipuncture (per animal)
- Tissue oxygen partial pressure determination in kidney
- Training (per hour/per day)
- Unilateral Ureteral Obstruction
- Use of a microsurgical workstation (per hour)
- Whole kidney clearance/oxygen consumption studies
Resource Development Core
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Description
With both the clinical and pre-clinical cores, the Resource Development Core will provide a dynamic resource and platform to develop, test and refine innovations that will accelerate pre-clinical and clinical research. In the pre-clinical area, new analytical approaches in metabolomics as well as functional in vivo imaging will be incubated to probe unique biological characteristics of disease development. In the clinical area, tools for federated machine learning using big EHR data will be developed.
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Services
- Assistance with manuscript development or publication support
- Research Resource Development (insert link for Development Core)
Contact Information
If you would like more information regarding services provided by UAB-UCSD O’Brien Center for AKI Research, please contact:
Monica Vasiliu
Website