Martin R. Pollak, M.D.

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center & Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Martin R. Pollak is the Chief of the Renal Division at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Pollak is also a member of the Cancer Genetics Program at the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center.

Dr. Pollak attended medical school at the New York University School of Medicine. He completed both his internship and residency at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in the field of Internal Medicine. Dr. Pollak went on to complete his fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the area of nephrology. He was an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital of Harvard before being named to his current position, and his clinical interests include general nephrology and inherited kidney disease.

Dr. Pollak’s laboratory studies the genetic basis of kidney disease. His lab is particularly interested in kidney disease characterized by proteinuria and glomerulosclerosis, and works to identify genes involved in the development of FSGS in minority populations.

Selected Publications
Toka HR, Pollak MR. The role of the calcium-sensing receptor in disorders of abnormal calcium handling and cardiovascular disease. Curr Opin Nephrol Hypertens. 2014 Sep; 23(5):494-501.

Pollak MR, Quaggin SE, Hoenig MP, Dworkin LD. The glomerulus: the sphere of influence. Clin J Am Soc Nephrol. 2014 Aug 7; 9(8):1461-9.

Thomson R, Genovese G, Canon C, Kovacsics D, Higgins MK, Carrington M, Winkler CA, Kopp J, Rotimi C, Adeyemo A, Doumatey A, Ayodo G, Alper SL, Pollak MR, Friedman DJ, Raper J. Evolution of the primate trypanolytic factor APOL1. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2014 May 20; 111(20):E2130-9.

Gbadegesin RA, Hall G, Adeyemo A, Hanke N, Tossidou I, Burchette J, Wu G, Homstad A, Sparks MA, Gomez J, Jiang R, Alonso A, Lavin P, Conlon P, Korstanje R, Stander MC, Shamsan G, Barua M, Spurney R, Singhal PC, Kopp JB, Haller H, Howell D, Pollak MR, Shaw AS, Schiffer M, Winn MP. Mutations in the Gene That Encodes the F-Actin Binding Protein Anillin Cause FSGS. J Am Soc Nephrol. 2014 Sep; 25(9):1991-2002.

Barua M, Stellacci E, Stella L, Weins A, Genovese G, Muto V, Caputo V, Toka HR, Charoonratana VT, Tartaglia M, Pollak MR. Mutations in PAX2 Associate with Adult-Onset FSGS. J Am Soc Nephrol. 2014 Sep; 25(9):1942-53.

Brown EJ, Pollak MR, Barua M. Genetic testing for nephrotic syndrome and FSGS in the era of next-generation sequencing. Kidney Int. 2014 May; 85(5):1030-8.

Ito K, Bick AG, Flannick J, Friedman DJ, Genovese G, Parfenov MG, Depalma SR, Gupta N, Gabriel SB, Taylor HA, Fox ER, Newton-Cheh C, Kathiresan S, Hirschhorn JN, Altshuler DM, Pollak MR, Wilson JG, Seidman JG, Seidman C. Increased Burden of Cardiovascular Disease in Carriers of APOL1 Genetic Variants. Circ Res. 2014 Feb 28; 114(5):845-50.

Ashraf S, Gee HY, Woerner S, Xie LX, Vega-Warner V, Lovric S, Fang H, Song X, Cattran DC, Avila-Casado C, Paterson AD, Nitschké P, Bole-Feysot C, Cochat P, Esteve-Rudd J, Haberberger B, Allen SJ, Zhou W, Airik R, Otto EA, Barua M, Al-Hamed MH, Kari JA, Evans J, Bierzynska A, Saleem MA, Böckenhauer D, Kleta R, El Desoky S, Hacihamdioglu DO, Gok F, Washburn J, Wiggins RC, Choi M, Lifton RP, Levy S, Han Z, Salviati L, Prokisch H, Williams DS, Pollak M, Clarke CF, Pei Y, Antignac C, Hildebrandt F. ADCK4 mutations promote steroid-resistant nephrotic syndrome through CoQ10 biosynthesis disruption. J Clin Invest. 2013 Dec 2; 123(12):5179-89.

Bruggeman LA, O’Toole JF, Ross MD, Madhavan SM, Smurzynski M, Wu K, Bosch RJ, Gupta S, Pollak MR, Sedor JR, Kalayjian RC. Plasma Apolipoprotein L1 Levels Do Not Correlate with CKD. J Am Soc Nephrol. 2014 Mar; 25(3):634-44.

Williams WW, Pollak MR. Health disparities in kidney disease–emerging data from the human genome. N Engl J Med. 2013 Dec 5; 369(23):2260-1.

Boston, MA