WashU Nephrology congratulates Associate Professor of Medicine Leslie Gewin, MD, on the renewal of her VA Merit Award from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The funding will support her research on “The Role of Fatty Acid Oxidation in Injured Kidney Tubules.”
The VA Merit Award is equivalent to an R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The highly competitive Merit program funds basic, preclinical biomedical, and behavioral studies, as well as clinical and epidemiological research that can improve the health and care of veterans. The current grant, which includes partial salary coverage plus $710k over 4 years, supports investigations on the role of key mitochondrial and peroxisomal fatty acid oxidation enzymes in tubule responses to acute kidney injury. Dr. Gewin’s studies involve a collaboration with Irfan Lodhi, PhD, in the Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism & Lipid Research at WashU.
A physician-scientist, Gewin oversees the seven members of her basic science research laboratory. Funded by the NIH and VA, her research focuses on proximal tubule responses to injury and how these responses affect fibrosis and chronic kidney disease progression. In her clinical work, she devotes time to the chronic kidney disease (CKD) clinic and nephrology consults at VA St. Louis Health Care System.
Dr Gewin is also one of the core leaders of the recently established Washington University Kidney O’Brien Center for Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) Research, which makes cutting-edge technologies, resources, and training more accessible to the kidney research community. The Center consists of four cores: an Administrative Core, a Resource Development Core, and two Biomedical Resource Cores (Metabolism Core and Variant Validation Core). As head of the Metabolism Core, Gewin facilitates the use of metabolic assays to promote advances in CKD-related research. The core provides consultation for users and access to a number of metabolic assays to interrogate changes in kidney metabolism relevant to CKD. Read more about the Metabolism Core.
Visit the Gewin Lab and follow @LeslieGewin on X.
