Accomplishment

Andreas Herrlich Receives VA Merit Award

Dr. Andreas Herrlich
Andreas Herrlich, MD, PhD

WashU Nephrology congratulates Associate Professor of Medicine Andreas Herrlich, MD, PhD, who received a four-year, $660,000 VA Merit Award from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs that will fund his work on “Remote Injury Responses after Acute Kidney Injury (AKI).”

The VA Merit Award, equal in standing to an R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), comes with a 5/8th position at the VA.  As a result of this, Herrlich will keep his research laboratory at Washington University School of Medicine.  His clinical practice and activities, however, will now be based at the St. Louis VA Medical Center-John Cochran Division.

Herrlich’s research focuses on developing therapeutic strategies for secondary organ complications after AKI, in particular acute lung injury.  AKI alone has a mortality of 15 to 30 percent.  This mortality increases to 60-80% when other organs, such as the lung, are affected.

Currently the Director of Translational Research in our Division, Herrlich, who joined our faculty in 2016, is the recipient of several grants from the NIH to study repair mechanisms after kidney injury.  In 2019, he was awarded a five-year, $1.125 million NIH grant to identify kidney-specific therapeutics to slow the progression of CKD.

To learn more about Herrlich and his research, visit the Herrlich Lab website.