In this episode, Dr. Peter Kotanko, MD FASN, Research Director from Renal Research Institute is joined by Drs. Valerie Luyckx, MBBCh, MSc, PhD from Children's Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland & Marcello Tonelli, MD, SM, FRCPC from the University of Calgary, as they discuss the intersection between kidney medicine and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

In this episode of Frontiers In Kidney Medicine & Biology, Dr. Peter Kotanko, Research Director at Renal Research Institute (RRI) is joined by Dr. Alhaji Cherif, PhD, Principal Mathematician also from RRI as they discuss the use of mathematical modeling and computations to gain insights into the pandemic in order to provide effective intervention measures and to understand the drivers of the contagion among kidney patients.

In this episode of Frontiers in Kidney Medicine & Biology, Dr. Peter Kotanko, Research Director at Renal Research Institute is joined by Dr. Fokko Pieter Wieringa, PhD, Principal Scientist at IMEC in The Netherlands as they address what pervasive sensing is (including some examples), as well as go into the opportunities and risk of pervasive sensing. If time allows, we will discuss in what direction pervasive sensing may be going.

In this episode, Dr. Peter Kotanko is joined by Dr. Roberto Pecoit-Filho, Senior Research Scientist from the Arbor Research Collaborative for Health, to discuss the differences between anemia in the general population and in patients with kidney disease. We also discuss the current understanding of the mechanisms behind CKD anemia and the perspective of the introduction of new treatment options and an expansion in the understanding of the pathophysiology.

In this session, we join Drs. Peter Kotanko & Bernard Canaud suggest that monthly monitoring of SCI, as part of routine baseline dialysis patient monitoring, will offer a new and cost-effective tool to detect earlier nutritional status deterioration. SCI used as a surrogate marker of active MM would facilitate detection of sarcopenia trends, offering opportunities to implement interventions that might delay, and halt or even reverse such deleterious dynamics. SCI can be easily integrated and used as a first-line tool in complement to visceral proteins (i.e., albumin) to monitor muscle mass changes in clinical routine.

In this session join Drs. Peter Kotanko, Research Director of the Renal Research Institute & Jeroen Kooman, Professor at  Maastricht University in the Netherlands, discuss the pathophysiology of hypoxemia and hypoxia in patients on dialysis will be discussed, as well as the mechanisms by which these phenomena are related to adverse outcomes. The maladaptive responses in patients on dialysis will be discussed in the context of comparative physiology, with the example of Sherpa, which shows a highly adaptive response to ambient hypoxia. It will also be discussed how lessons from comparative physiology might be of potential benefit to patients on dialysis.

This session discusses Dr. David Keane's (Leeds Teaching Hospitals' Clinical Scientist) research interests in general and particularly a piece of research that aimed to describe the time of onset of intradialytic hypotension during hemodialysis sessions. This will lead to discussions, with Dr. Peter Kotanko (RRI's Research Director) of what the research can teach us about how we prescribe the length and frequency of hemodialysis sessions.

A discussion between Drs. Peter Kotanko and Richard Weller on the latter's research into the effects of sunlight on systemic health.  Dr. Weller describes two recent epidemiological studies he has performed in which he demonstrated an inverse relationship between sunlight exposure and blood pressure, and COVID mortality.  He has previously demonstrated NO release from UV exposed skin to the circulation which may account for these effects.

Frontiers in Kidney Medicine and Biology is an interview series presented by the Renal Research Institute (RRI) and hosted by Research Director, Peter Kotanko, MD, FASN. Each episode of the Frontiers in Kidney Medicine and Biology series showcases an in-depth conversation with thought leaders from around the world.  These foremost scientists and doctors share their insights into the latest advances in renal research and beyond, and assert how they are taking medicine, research, and science to exponentially higher levels.  Each episode of the is available on the RRI website, YouTube channel, and wherever you listen to your podcasts.