Jennifer Charlton, MD

The goal of our laboratory is to protect and promote kidney health in the smallest, most vulnerable infants: those born prematurely.

Each day in the United States, ~1400 infants are born before their kidneys have the chance to fully develop. These children are at a significant risk of future chronic kidney disease. Our group studies renal development in an ex utero environment in the hopes of avoiding kidney injury and promoting normal renal development.

We are working with biomedical engineers to create noninvasive methods to determine the number of nephrons an individual possesses. Understanding how the infant kidney develops away from the protection of its mother’s environment and which infants are at risk for chronic kidney disease will allow us to develop therapies to reduce chronic kidney disease in this vulnerable population.