Awardees

Supervisors: Dr. Andrew Advani and Dr. Kim Connelly
Award: Keenan Family Foundation - KRESCENT Joint Fellowship
Institution: Keenan Research Centre for Biomedical Science, Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute - St. Michael Hospital
Year: 2015-2018

Dr. Sri Nagarjun Batchu will complete his post-doctoral fellowship under the supervision of Dr. Andrew Advani and Dr. Kim A. Connelly at the Keenan Research Centre for Biomedical Science and Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto. Dr. Batchu’s project is focused on identifying and developing new treatments for cardiorenal disease.

Kidney disease is a major cause of illness and death amongst Canadians. When kidney disease reaches the stage where the kidneys stop working people need treatment with dialysis or with a kidney transplant. However, many people with kidney disease will never reach this stage but will instead die of cardiovascular diseases such as heart attack or heart failure. The term “cardiorenal disease” refers to the situation where heart disease and kidney disease affect the same person and where the presence of one of the conditions affects the development of the other. Dr. Batchu’s project is focused on understanding the role that a particular protein called HDAC6 plays in the development of kidney disease and heart disease. HDAC6 is an enzyme that is present in all our cells and changes the chemical structure of certain other proteins by a process that is called “deacetylation”. Dr. Batchu hopes that his work will pave the way to the development of inhibitors (or blockers) of HDAC6 as a new treatment that can slow the progression of kidney failure and heart failure in the millions of people at risk.