The Division of Nephrology is proud to announce that the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) has elected Ying Maggie Chen, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine, into its 2022 class of members.
Founded in 1908, ASCI is one of the oldest and most esteemed nonprofit honor societies of physician-scientists.
Dr. Chen is a nephrotic syndrome (NS) specialist who treats rare, protein-spilling kidney diseases and is the Director of WashU Nephrology’s Nephrotic Syndrome Clinic. A major focus of the M. Chen Laboratory is to investigate the molecular pathogenesis of organelle dysfunction-induced kidney diseases, to discover endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress biomarkers, and to develop highly-targeted therapies by employing high-throughput drug screening. Her group has pioneered discovery of urinary ER stress biomarkers, including MANF, CRELD2 and BiP (Patent 10156564, 2018). They have also discovered a new class of drugs, podocyte ER calcium stabilizers in the treatment of NS, and are currently leading the investigation of the function of the novel ER protein MANF in the treatment of kidney disease (Patent 11129871, 2021).
“I feel very proud of being elected to the ASCI,” says Chen. “I hope it will be an encouragement to women physicians, no matter where they are from or what barriers they had to overcome, to pursue ground-breaking research.”
Membership to ASCI is by election only. Acceptance to the Society reflects significant scientific contributions achieved at a relatively young age – only researchers who are 50 years of age or younger are eligible for nomination.
A total of 95 new members, from 46 different institutions and a wide variety of medical backgrounds, will be formally inducted during the ASCI Dinner and New Member Induction Ceremony in Chicago on April 8, 2022.
WashU is honored to be home to four of the newly-elected members. In addition to Dr. Chen, the other WashU members are: Opeolu Adeoye, MD, MS, Emergency Medicine; Kory Lavine, MD, PhD, Cardiology; and Julie Schwarz, MD, PhD, Radiation Oncology; Brian Kim, MD, previously of WashU Dermatology, is now at Mount Sinai.
