Nephrology and urology

Care of individuals with irreversible kidney failure accounts for up to 2% of the UK health budget, and new treatments for renal disease are urgently needed.

The University of Manchester and the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital are at the forefront of translational research into children’s, adult’s and familial kidney disease. 

Our research vision incorporates:

• The definition of the genetic causes of disease in our cohorts with kidney, ureter and bladder disease.
• The discovery of predictive biomarkers in individuals with kidney and urinary tract disease.
• The definition in preclinical trials of the efficacy and safety of novel therapies (e.g. precursor cells and growth factors) to delay the need for dialysis.
• Testing of novel therapies for renal disease and the refinement of existing therapies via randomised prospective national trials.

Our expertise

Our investigators include international experts in kidney and urinary tract malformations (Professor Adrian Woolf, Chair of Paediatric Science) and kidney glomerular cell biology and proteomics (Professor Rachel Lennon, Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow). We have strong links with Manchester research teams specialising in diabetes, stem cells, genomics, cardio-renal disease and imaging, and with adult and paediatric nephrology and urology clinical departments. Our work is funded by the MRC, the Wellcome Trust, Newlife, and several kidney research charities.

• Peter Gardner

  View Peter’s research profile.

  Peter works in infrared and Raman imaging of biological tissue and cells and he is interested in 3D printing of tissue. Further information is available on Peter Gardner’s lab website.

   

   

• Susan Kimber

  View Susan’s research profile.

  Sue focuses on using human pluripotent stem cells for disease modelling and regenerative medicine. She is interested in human kidney and cartilage development and genetic disease.

• Rachel Lennon

  View Rachel’s research profile.

  Rachel specialises in basement membrane assembly, maintenance and repair.

• Martin Lowe

  View Martin’s research profile.

  Martin works on the molecular mechanisms of protein trafficking in the endocytic and secretory pathways. His work involves understanding the mechanisms that govern various genetic disorders, and finding better treatments for them.

• Neil Roberts

  View Neil’s research profile.

  Neil specialises in viral vector-mediated gene therapy pre-clinical trials for genetic diseases of the lower urinary tract.

• Adrian Woolf

  View Adrian’s research profile.

  Adrian is a clinician scientist working out how development goes wrong so that people are born with absent or malformed organs. His research mission is to take the first pre-clinical steps towards designing and testing novel biological therapies for these devastating diseases.