Barry Freedman, MD
Dr. Barry Freedman, Section Chief of the Division of Nephrology at Wake Forest University visited Washington University in St. Louis and delivered Renal Grand Rounds on ApoL1 Nephropathy. A leader in this field, he described his patient-based approach that has helped to uncover this critical genetic susceptibility that underlies a substantial portion of CKD and ESRD risk in african american patients. One of his important messages concerned the primacy of direct patient observation and engagement in order to develop novel hypotheses. His group has developed a clinical assay that can provide ApoL1 genotyping for the risk alleles with a four hour turnaround – a service that might impact organ allocation in the future.
