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Alessia Fornoni, M.D., Ph.D.
NephCure Bridge Grant Awardee
Dr. Alessia Fornoni is a tenured Professor of Medicine and Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. She is the Chief of the Katz Family Division of Nephrology and Hypertension and serves as and Director and Chair of the Peggy and Harold Katz Drug Discovery Center. She is also the Associate Director of the MSTP program. In 2013, Dr. Fornoni gained experience in drug development as Global Head of Discovery in Cardiovascular and Metabolism at Hoffman-La Roche in Basel. She is currently the Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of L&F Health LLC, a small start-up company focused on finding a cure for patients affected by chronic kidney diseases.
Miami, Florida
University of Miami
Lay Summary of the Project:
Dr. Fornoni demonstrated that rituximab (a specialized drug primarily used for cancer treatment) can help reduce the percentage of patients with post-transplant recurrence of FSGS to 26 percent, compared with 64 percent for those who did not take the drug. Using kidney biopsies and blood from patients with FSGS, Dr. Fornoni continues to study the mechanism by which rituximab protects podocytes. This may pave the way for the development of a new generation of therapies for recurrent FSGS and for the development of an assay to be used before transplant to identify patients at risk for recurrent FSGS disease.
