Kidney Precision Medicine Project (KPMP)

The Kidney Precision Medicine Project (KPMP) is focused on finding new ways to treat acute kidney injury (AKI) and chronic kidney disease (CKD). We will be obtaining kidney tissues from individuals volunteering to participate in KPMP. The tissue will be analyzed in an effort to redefine kidney disease in molecular terms and identify novel targeted therapies. The network will develop state-of-the-art methods to obtain and analyze these biopsies, linking information on cellular programs with kidney structure. We are also developing the next generation of software tools to visualize and understand the various components of these devastating diseases. 

Through collaboration with research teams at UCSF and Stanford, we have developed two multiplex assays (multiplex Immunofluorescence and In Situ Hybridization (mIFISH) and CODEX) that visualize multiple mRNAs and proteins at single cell resolution level. These assays, coupled with advanced high resolution whole slide imaging and sophisticated computer-assisted image analysis, can assess not only the quantitative aspects but also the spatial organizational aspects of the analytes. The in situ assays will be supplemented by additional ancillary tissue-based assays of near single cell proteomics and multiplexed single-cell RNA-Seq (mdrosc RNA-Seq).