Andreas Herrlich on Editorial Board of New Comprehensive Physiology Journal

Andreas Herrlich, MD, PhD, Director of Translational Medicine at WashU Nephrology, has been recruited for the editorial board of the new journal, Comprehensive Physiology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by John Wiley & Sons on behalf of the American Physiological Society that will focus on interorgan communication.

The journal, previously dedicated solely to publishing review articles, has not only shifted its focus to offering insights and advancements in interorgan communication in health and disease, but will now feature research articles, reviews, and editorials. This re-launch marks a new chapter for the journal and the Society.

Comprehensive Physiology is now open for submissions. Example topics include inter-organ cellular communication, signaling pathways, organ crosstalk, systems biology, inter-organ pathology and pathogenesis, and the role of hormones and neurotransmitters. The journal will publish bi-monthly issues beginning January 1, 2025.

Dr. Herrlich was recruited to the editorial board as an Associate Editor because of his expertise in the field of interorgan communication. His research focuses on developing therapeutic strategies for secondary organ complications in kidney disease in the kidney-heart, kidney-lung, and kidney-brain axis.

Joining our faculty in 2016, Herrlich has been the recipient of multiple grants from the NIH and other sources to study repair mechanisms after kidney injury (see articles below). Most recently, he has received grants from the Washington University Pediatric Center of Excellence in Nephrology in the amount of $37,000 (one year) for his project titled AKI-induced Neuroinflammation and Neurocognitive Dysfunction in Juvenile Mice, as well as a two-year grant of $50,000/year from the McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience.

“This highly interdisciplinary project, which includes team members from nephrology, critical care, psychiatry and neurology, is seeking to understand integrative mechanisms by which acute kidney injury may directly impact human brain function and cognition,” says Herrlich.

The Herrlich Lab has demonstrated in an animal model that delirium due to acute kidney injury relies on osteopontin-mediated immune activation in the hippocampus. The proposed work will determine the effect of AKI on the brain using biomarkers of neuroinflammation including [¹¹C]DPA-713, a PET radiotracer that measures microglia density, and diffusion basis spectrum magnetic resonance imaging (DBSI), which measures hypercellularity and edema. In addition, resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) will be obtained to measure the status of functional brain networks, the disruption of which is associated with abnormal cognition.

Because of Herrlich’s expertise in interorgan communication and translational research, the German Science and Humanities Council of the German Government recently invited him to be a scientific advisor to review large-scale research infrastructures for a national prioritization process. He will participate in the review of proposals, focusing on their scientific potential, scientific utilization, and relevance for Germany as a location of science and research and their feasibility from a scientific perspective.

The German Science and Humanities Council is the oldest science policy advisory body in Europe. Founded in 1957 in the Federal Republic of Germany, it advises the federal government and the governments of the states on any questions pertaining to the content and structural development of science, research and higher education.

In the past several years, Herrlich has also organized the EMBO-FEBS lecture course on Molecular Mechanisms of Tissue Injury, Repair and Fibrosis in 2019 and the Molecular Mechanisms of Interorgan Crosstalk in Health and Disease in 2022 and 2024, both held on the beautiful Greek Island of Spetses.