Joseph V. Bonventre, MD, PhD, the Samuel A. Levine Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Chief Emeritus of the Division of Renal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, will deliver the annual Aubrey R. Morrison Lectureship. His talk, “KIM-1: A Translational Journey Through Non-Malignant and Malignant Kidney Disease,” will take place on Friday, September 19, 2025, 12-1 pm, Chromalloy Conference Room, 4950 Children’s Pl, St. Louis, MO, 63110.
Dr. Bonventre holds the Constantine L. Hampers, MD Endowed Chair in Renal Medicine and serves as Chief of the Division of Engineering in Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is a past president of the American Society of Nephrology and a founding member of the Board of Directors of the National Space Biology Research Institute.
He has created widely used protocols to convert human stem cells to metanephric mesenchyme- and ureteric bud-derived kidney tissue. His team pioneered the use of patient-derived induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to model polycystic kidney disease, revealing key abnormalities in ciliary protein levels, and discovered that the KRAB-A protein domain inhibits transcription, a key component of CRISPRi technology. In addition, he is credited with discovering Kidney Injury Molecule-1 (KIM-1), a urinary and plasma injury and prognostic biomarker.
His scholarly output includes more than 450 original publications, over 155 chapters and reviews, and three books. With more than 101,000 citations and an h-index of 156, Scholar GPS ranked him #1 Lifetime in Nephrology in 2025.
Dr. Bonventre has been elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. He has been awarded the Osler Medal of the Royal Society, the Bywaters Award for the International Society of Nephrology, the Massry Award from the National Kidney Foundation, and the Homer Smith Award of the American Society of Nephrology.
Read more about Bonventre’s groundbreaking research on his lab’s website.
The lectureship honors Aubrey Morrison, MBBS, MACP, FASN, Emeritus Professor of Medicine, who retired from WashU Nephrology in October 2020 after more than 45 years at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. A physician-scientist, Dr. Morrison established himself as a leading figure in the study of inflammatory processes in the body. Read about his illustrious career here and explore the Alumni Connections feature article in our Fall 2020 Nephrology Update Newsletter.
Bonventre speaks about how the Division of Engineering in Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital brings together technological expertise with medical expertise and basic biological expertise to bring new advances to medicine:
