Upcoming events
Friday, October 2, 2026 · 2 to 5 PM · Smilow 12-146
Friday, October 16, 2026 · 2 to 5 PM · Smilow 12-146
Friday, October 30, 2026 · 2 to 5 PM · Smilow 12-146
Recent news
CAR T cells open the door to transplantation for highly sensitized patients
In a Phase I trial led by Ali Naji with NYU Langone and Mass General, dual CAR T-cell therapy removed anti-donor antibodies and allowed two Penn patients to receive kidneys that had been out of reach (New England Journal of Medicine).
2026-27 Workshop Series opens with glomerular disease
Gaia Coppock, Jonathan Levinsohn and Kirk Campbell opened the new series on October 2 at the Smilow Center. Next: kidney cancer on October 16.
TBX2 identified as a regulator of vascular calcification in CKD
A European Heart Journal study from the Susztak laboratory combined human kidney genetics with gene-edited mice to explain why calcification is so common in kidney disease.
The Biostatistics Core opens its intake form
Jarcy Zee and Dawei Xie lead the new Core, with eight affiliated faculty and eleven staff biostatisticians, and seed support for fellows and junior investigators.
Cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic syndrome as a mitochondrial systems disorder
A Nature Reviews Nephrology perspective from Center investigators frames CKM syndrome around mitochondrial biology, the subject of the November 13 workshop.
One center for the whole kidney
The Penn-CHOP Kidney Innovation Center brings together the kidney researchers of the University of Pennsylvania and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia into a single community. Nephrologists, geneticists, biostatisticians, pathologists, surgeons, computational scientists and trainees from both institutions work side by side on one problem: kidney disease affects more than 850 million people worldwide, and for most of them we still cannot say why their kidneys fail or how to stop it.
We believe the answer comes from studying the human kidney itself, at every scale and at every age. The Center connects the laboratories that map kidney genetics and cell biology with the clinical cohorts that follow patients for decades, the biostatisticians who turn those data into evidence, and the clinicians who bring new treatments to adults and children in Philadelphia.
Katalin Susztak, MD, PhD
Willard and Rhoda Ware Professor of Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases, Professor of Medicine and Genetics, Perelman School of Medicine; Professor of Ped…
Michelle Denburg, MD, MSCE
Professor of Pediatrics and Epidemiology, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Perelman School of Medicine. Director of the Pediatric Center of Exc…
Research programs
Eleven programs, each with its own workshop in the 2026-27 series. All programs
Glomerular Disease
FSGS, IgA nephropathy, membranous nephropathy and the podocyte.
Kidney Cancer
New targets and new hope for renal cell carcinoma.
Artificial Intelligence and Digital Pathology
The intelligent kidney: from pixels to precision.
Cardiovascular-Kidney-Metabolic Disease
Heart, kidney and metabolism: connecting the dots.
Kidney Genetics and Genomics
Cracking the kidney code: from genes to discovery.
Kidney Development
Building the kidney: from cells to organs.
Shared cores
Biostatistics Core
Jarcy Zee, PhD (Director)
The Biostatistics Core within the Penn-CHOP Kidney Innovation Center provides leadership and expertise in study design, data management and statistical analysis for research in nephrology. Affiliated faculty and research…
Kidney Genetics Core
Simone Sanna-Cherchi, MD (Director)
Simone Sanna-Cherchi is a nephrologist and human geneticist who joined Penn and CHOP from Columbia University, where he led one of the largest genetic studies of congenital anomalies of the kidney and urinary tract and o…
Biobanking and Data Core
Katalin Susztak, MD, PhD (Director)
The Susztak Laboratory has collected more than 5,000 human kidney samples with clinical information and profiled them at every molecular layer: genotype, bulk and single-cell transcriptome, chromatin accessibility, DNA m…
Pediatric Clinical Trials Core (PCEN)
Michelle Denburg, MD, MSCE and Susan Furth, MD, PhD (Directors)
The Pediatric Center of Excellence in Nephrology (PCEN) was established at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia with NIDDK funding to promote and develop clinical trial research in pediatric nephrology. As a core of t…
From our papers
Figures from recent open-access papers by Center investigators (CC BY). All publications
ELF3 is induced in injured tubule cells and links kidney function GWAS loci to epithelial inflammation.
Science Advances 2026 · PubMed
Genetic analysis prioritized WHAMM, an actin and microtubule regulator, as a kidney disease gene.
Cell Reports 2025 · PubMed
TraceBind corrects sample-specific Tn5 bias for transcription factor footprinting in bulk and single-cell ATAC-seq.
Nature Communications 2026 · PubMed
Resources
Cores, cohorts, NIH centers and open data. All resources · Clinical trials
Pediatric Center of Excellence in Nephrology (PCEN)
The NIDDK-funded center at CHOP for clinical trial research in pediatric nephrology, and the Center's Pediatric Clinical Trials Core.
Penn Renal-Electrolyte and Hypertension Division
The academic nephrology division of the Perelman School of Medicine: clinics, research and the nephrology fellowship.
CHOP Division of Nephrology
Pediatric kidney care and research at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, with its dialysis, transplant, glomerular, stone and inherited kidney disease programs.
TRIDENT
Transformative Research in Diabetic Nephropathy: the Penn-led kidney biopsy consortium for diabetic kidney disease, now in its second phase.