St Peter’s Trust research projects

To begin in the 2022/23 academic year, £117,052.97 was awarded in 2022 and four applications were funded.

1. Automated Patch Clamp System 
   This is to complement and greatly expand the capacity of the UCL Department of Renal Medicine (UCL DoRM) to undertake electrophysiology studies in renal epithelial and immune cells.
   Walsh/​Siew – £39,803.75
    
2. Investigating the impact of sodium on alloimmune responses in kidney transplant recipients
   Rhys/​Salama – £20,871.60
    
3. Augmenting the effect of sonodynamic therapy for prostate cancer
   Nomikou/​Emberton – £20,558.65
    
4. Optimising delivery scaffolds for functional urinary tract organoids
   Long – £35,818.97
    

5. Present status of the fund for the St Peter’s Chair of Nephrology

   The first role of the St Peter’s Trust was to raise money to fund a permanent chair of nephrology. The third holder of this prestigious post, Danny Gale, now works in the Royal Free Hospital.

   That which was thought to be enough money in 1970 to fund the chair totally and for ever (£1m), now funds only a fraction of it. Fortunately, good financial management and a certain amount of luck, has enabled the fund to grow.

   The St Peter’s money now pays for a small part of the professorial salary, completely funds a PhD student and contributes to the departmental research costs.

   The fund is now administered by the UCL charitable funds unit and is ultimately controlled by the Medical School. Happily, it lives on, contributing to the role for which it was originally intended.

To begin in the 2021/22 academic year, £81,000 was awarded in 2021 and four applications were funded.

1. Validation of technology enabled active learning to deliver surgical entrustable professional activities in urological robotic surgery fellowship training
   Sridhar/​Kelly – £30,000
    
2. Investigating B cell responses in patients with end stage kidney disease and defining the basics of a hyporesponsive immune phenotype
   Salama/​Motallebzadeh – £28,953
    
3. Equipment – Advanced hardware for machine learning algorithm training and multicolour volumetric image analysis and visualisation of optically cleared samples in virtual 3D space
   Walsh/​Siew – £20,000
    
4. Day case surgery for artificial sphincter implantation: Feasibility, safety and cost effectiveness
   Kapriniotis/​Ockrim – £2,000

To begin in the 2020/21 academic year, 2020 was a bumper year for the trust because £250,000 was available and there were many excellent applications. We were able to fund almost all of them.

£100,000 had been allocated for a PhD studentship. There were three applications and the award was made to a project entitled: ​‘Exploring the mechanisms of AKI using novel in vitro culture system’
Under the direction of Dr Klootwijk and Professor Salama for £90,612.

Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) occurs with several serious illnesses, especially infections. The mechanism of causation is not fully understood. With early detection it is treatable, but delay is often fatal. It is a national priority to research this field.

The remaining money was allocated to eight projects and one piece of equipment. There was a good spectrum of laboratory and clinical projects in Urology and Nephrology:

1. Tyrosine kinase profiling to predict disease remission and treatments needs in Lupus nephritis.
   Vajgel/​Salama – £25,000
    
2. Pilot study to investigate feasibility & acceptability of sestamibi SPEC/CT for renal mass characterisation
   Tran/​Wagner – £24,828
    
3. Mechanisms of paracellular phosphate absorption and its regulation.
   Marks – £15,198
   
   Asowata EO, Olusanya O, Abaakil K, Chichger H, Srai SKS, Unwin RJ, et al. Diet-induced iron deficiency in rats impacts small intestinal calcium and phosphate absorption. Acta Physiol (Oxf). 2021:e13650.
   
   Hernando N, Pastor-Arroyo EM, Marks J, Schnitzbauer U, Knopfel T, Burki M, et al. 1,25(OH)2 vitamin D3 stimulates active phosphate transport but not paracellular phosphate absorption in mouse intestine. J Physiol. 2021;599(4):1131–50.
    
4. Digital redesign of electronic-Patient reported outcome measures (e‑PROM) data collection for Uro-oncology clinical research at UCL and UCLH: pilot.
   Dinneen/​Shaw/​Kelly – £11,100
    
5. Development of a point of care device to monitor kidney transplant rejection.
   Motallebzadeh – £11,713
    
6. Variability in expression of Methylmalonyll-CoA mutase as a risk for dehydration related acute kidney injury.
   Oomatia/​Caplin – £13,550
    
7. Antenatal gene therapy to correct bladder dysfunction in posterior urethral valves.
   Winyard/​Long – £31,250
    
8. Anti-fibrotic therapy for bladder dysfunction in posterior urethral valves.
   Johal/​Fry/​Winyard – £24,375

Equipment

1. Sample Processing Devices for rapid optical clearing and immunostaining of intact 3D tissue samples.
   Walsh/​Siew/​Salama – £24,945

1. Renal Cancer Tumouroids: New generation 3D in vitro models created from individual patients for testing drug responses.
   Loizidou/​Tran/​Yaghini – £84,154
    
2. A Novel therapeutic target in acute kidney injury.
   Haschler/​Norman/​Alan Salama – £11,000

1. Testing a complement inhibitor.
   Marks/​Gale – £24,645.47
    
2. Influence of the gut and urinary microbiota on outcomes after renal transplantation.
   Motallebzadeh – £24,979
    
3. Domiciliary REcovery After Medicalisation Pathway (DREAM Path).
   Khetrapal – £24,500
    
4. Genetic analysis using high performance computing in chronic kidney disease.
   Stanescu – £24,817.26

Equipment

1. Purchase of a next generation Azure c600 chemiluminescent, UV, RGB and laser NIR imaging system for the Centre for Nephrology. This replaces a piece of equipment that is no longer fit for service. It will be shared by several groups in the laboratory – £24,996.79.