Director
Carmen M. Halabi, MD, PhD
Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Nephrology, Hypertension & Apheresis
Associate Professor of Cell Biology & Physiology
Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine
Carmen Halabi is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics (Nephrology) and Cell Biology and Physiology at WashU Medicine. After completing her MD and PhD training at the University of Iowa in 2009, she moved to St. Louis where she completed a residency in Pediatrics at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and a fellowship in nephrology at WUSM. For her postdoctoral research training, she joined Dr. Robert Mecham’s laboratory, where she examined the effect of different classes of anti-hypertensive medications on large artery mechanics and cardiovascular physiology in a mouse model of elastin insufficiency (Williams syndrome). In her own research program, she focuses on understanding how abnormalities in the vascular extracellular matrix affect large and small arteries both structurally and functionally in the context of vascular development and disease, particularly aneurysms and hypertension. She has developed expertise in using transgenic mouse models of hypertension to study the vasculature both structurally and functionally. With support from the Alport Syndrome Foundation and in collaboration with Dr. Jeffrey Miner, she is determining whether mutations in type IV collagen, that cause Alport syndrome, increase the risk of arterial aneurysms in patients. She is committed to exposing and mentoring the next generation of physician-scientists in pediatric kidney disease and kidney disease research.
Sanjay Jain, MD, PhD
Professor of Medicine, Nephrology
Professor of Pediatrics, Molecular Genetics and Genomics Program
Director Kidney Translational Research Center
Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine
Sanjay Jain is a Professor of Medicine, Pediatrics and Pathology & Immunology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, USA (WUSM). His laboratory focuses on how kidneys and the lower urinary tract develop and organize to maintain homeostasis across lifespan in health and disease. His has defined key developmental pathways and mechanisms that regulate the joining of primitive ureter and bladder, initiation of the collecting system and branching morphogenesis of the kidney and genetic mutations associated with CAKUT. He leads multiple NIH-sponsored atlas efforts to map healthy and disease states in the human kidney including HuBMAP, KPMP, RBK/GUDMAP and Pediatric Center of Excellence in Nephrology. The team has identified, validated and mapped ~100 cell identities in the kidney including healthy and injured cells and defined genes and pathways that help recovery or predict decline in kidney function.