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Review
. 2021 Mar 1;320(3):F342-F350.
doi: 10.1152/ajprenal.00452.2020. Epub 2020 Dec 28.

The Vanderbilt O'Brien Kidney Center

Ambra Pozzi  1   2   3 , Raymond C Harris  1   2   3
Affiliations
Review

The Vanderbilt O'Brien Kidney Center

Ambra Pozzi et al. Am J Physiol Renal Physiol. .

Abstract

The Vanderbilt O'Brien Kidney Center (VOKC) is one of the eight National Institutes of Health P30-funded centers in the United States. The mission of these core-based centers is to provide technical and conceptual support to enhance and facilitate research in the field of kidney diseases. The goal of the VOKC is to provide support to understand mechanisms and identify potential therapies for acute and chronic kidney disease. The services provided by the VOKC are meant to help the scientific community to have the right support and tools as well as to select the right animal model, statistical analysis, and clinical study design to perform innovative research and translate discoveries into personalized care to prevent, diagnose, and cure kidney disease. To achieve these goals, the VOKC has in place a program to foster collaborative investigation into critical questions of kidney disease, to personalize diagnosis and treatment of kidney disease, and to disseminate information about kidney disease and the benefits of VOKC services and research. The VOKC is complemented by state-of-the-art cores and an education and outreach program whose goals are to provide an educational platform to enhance the study of kidney disease, to publicize information about services available through the VOKC, and to provide information about kidney disease to patients and other interested members of the community. In this review, we highlight the major services and contributions of the VOKC.

Keywords: O’Brien Center; core services; education; kidney disease; mouse; outreach; pathophysiology; preclinical studies; workshops.

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Conflict of interest statement

No conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise, are declared by the authors.

Figures

None
Graphical abstract
Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Schematic representation of the Vanderbilt O’Brien Kidney Center (VOKC). There are three major interactive components to this Center, namely, four biomedical research cores (pink), a pilot and feasibility project program (green), and an educational and enrichment program (blue). Their roles are described in detail in the text.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
National and international services provided by the Vanderbilt O’Brien Kidney Center (VOKC). The VOKC, in addition to supporting intramural research, supports both national and international investigators working at universities (blue lines) and pharmaceutical companies (red). The degree of usage of the VOKC cores is indicated by the thickness of the lines.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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