Dr. Barbara Ballermann

Unravelling the causes of kidney failure

A Tier 1 Canada Research Chairholder at the U of A hopes to unravel poorly understood areas in kidney biology and disease and, hopefully, learn more about the mechanisms that lead to kidney failure.

Earlier this spring, world renowned nephrologist Barbara Ballermann (Medicine) was named the Canada Research Chair in Endothelial Cell Biology, with funding of $1.4 million from the Federal program.

Dr. Ballermann was recruited to the U of A from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine; she is a nephrologist who is an internationally recognized expert in diseases that affect kidney blood vessels. After carrying out research in Harvard, John Hopkins, and most recently, Alberta Einstein College of Medicine, Dr. Ballermann has returned to Canada to set up a new centre of excellence in basic research that focuses on kidney vasculature (arteries and veins) and the fundamental processes that lead to kidney failure.

The kidneys filter the blood and produce urine, which contains the waste products that result from the body’s metabolism. When the filtering function breaks down, the body gets sick. In the late 1980s, Dr. Ballermann identified the cells lining the blood vessels of the kidneys as an important area of study in kidney disease, and she was probably the first investigator in nephrology to do so.

Her present research is designed to uncover the mechanisms that lead to kidney failure in preeclampsia, a dangerous condition which can affect pregnant women, and haemolytic uremic syndrome, thought to develop when the lining of small blood vessels supplying the kidney become damaged.

Dr. Ballermann’s research is serving as a foundation for training new investigators in this area of nephrology at the University of Alberta, where they use state-of the art imaging systems, cell culture approaches, and genetically modified mice as well as large scale genomic and proteomic studies of human kidney tissue — all in order to unravel the fundamental processes that lead to kidney failure.

For further information, please contact Dr. Barbara Ballermann using the Email contact form or by phone at 780 407-8944