Insights and Advances
in the Understanding
of IgA Nephropathy

Kirk Campbell, MD, is the Irene and Dr Arthur M Fishberg Professor of Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he is vice chair of the Department of Medicine for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and former director of the Nephrology Fellowship Program. His research focuses on kidney podocytes and their correlation with proteinuric kidney diseases, including focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, IgA nephropathy, and diabetic nephropathy.

Dr Campbell is a graduate of the University of Connecticut School of Medicine and completed his residency training in Internal Medicine at Yale New Haven Hospital, followed by a clinical and research fellowship in nephrology at Mount Sinai. In addition to treating patients with kidney disease, Dr Campbell leads a National Institutes of Health–funded research program focused on developing new therapeutic interventions for proteinuric diseases. He actively participates in clinical trials testing of novel agents for primary glomerular disease and is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation.

He is a past president of the New York Society of Nephrology, a member of the board of directors of the NephCure Foundation, a standing member of the Pathobiology of Kidney Disease study section at the National Institutes of Health, and a member of the Medical Advisory Board of the National Kidney Foundation of Greater New York. He has served on the American Society of Nephrology Grants Review Committee and the Kidney Week Education Committee.

Richard Lafayette, MD, is a nephrology specialist in Stanford, CA, who has over 37 years of experience in the medical field. Dr Lafayette has extensive experience in glomerulonephritis and nephropathy. He has been the director of the Stanford Glomerular Disease Center since 2010.

He graduated from New York Medical College in 1985. He was named one of America’s Top Doctors’ “Best Doctors” from 2004 to 2018 and received the America’s Top Doctors Award from Castle Connolly from 2014 to 2018. He was on the editorial board of Kidney News through the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) from 2010 to 2021, was a member of ASN’s Glomerular Disease Advisory Committee from 2013 to 2017, and is currently an ex officio member of the ASN Communications Committee.

I lead the Renal Research Group within the College of Life Sciences, University of Leicester. My research is focused on a bench-to-bedside approach to improving our understanding of the pathogenesis of IgA nephropathy, which is a common global cause of kidney failure. I am the IgA nephropathy Rare Disease Group lead for the UK National Registry of Rare Kidney Diseases and a member of the steering committee for the International IgA Nephropathy Network. I work closely with pharmaceutical companies interested in new treatments for IgA nephropathy and am the chief investigator for a number of international randomized controlled Phase 2 and Phase 3 clinical trials in IgA nephropathy. I was a member of the FDA and American Society of Nephrology Kidney Health Initiative: Identifying Surrogate Endpoints for Clinical Trials in IgA Nephropathy work group. I am an editorial board member for Kidney International and Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, a co-chair of the UK Glomerulonephritis Clinical Study Group, and was IgA nephropathy lead for the recent revision of the Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes Clinical Practice Guidelines for Glomerular Diseases.

Dr Dana Rizk is a professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) in the division of nephrology. She obtained her medical degree at the American University of Beirut in Beirut, Lebanon. She then came to the United States and joined St Louis University for the first 2 years of residency and subsequently transferred to Emory University, where she completed her residency, chief residency, and nephrology fellowship. In 2008, Dr Rizk joined the faculty at UAB as a clinical nephrologist, providing patient care in the inpatient, outpatient, and dialysis settings. She heads the glomerular disease clinic at UAB.

She has been involved in the training and mentoring of many fellows and is the recipient of several awards for excellence in teaching. Dr Rizk is involved in clinical research and serves as site principal investigator on several clinical trials and NIH-funded studies. She serves as the director of Clinical Trials Research in the division of nephrology as well as the medical director of the Clinical Trials Administrative Office at UAB. Her main research interests revolve around glomerular diseases with a special focus in IgA nephropathy.

Dr Rizk is a co-founder and co-owner of Reliant Glycosciences LLC, a company dedicated to the development of assays for biomarkers of IgA nephropathy.

Dr Laura H Mariani is a nephrologist in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and has been an assistant professor in internal medicine with University of Michigan Health-Ann Arbor since 2015. She received her medical degree from the University of Michigan Medical School and has been in practice for almost 15 years. Her research focuses on glomerular disease, and she is an American Society of Nephrology (ASN) Board Review Course & Update faculty member in glomerular disease, the associate program director for nephrology fellowship at the University of Michigan, and a GlomCon faculty member. In 2019, she was inducted into the American Journal of Kidney Disease reviewer hall of fame, and in 2020 she received the Teaching Excellence award in Pre-Clinical Teaching from the University of Michigan. She is currently an editorial board member for the American Journal of Kidney Disease, a member of Kidney 360, and an associate editor for Glomerular Diseases, and has been a member of the ASN since 2001.

Dr Brad Rovin is a nephrology specialist in Columbus, Ohio, and a professor of medicine and pathology at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. He is the chief of the division of nephrology and the medical director of the Center for Clinical Research Management at the College of Medicine. He has over 39 years of experience in the medical field, including extensive basic, translational, and clinical research in glomerular diseases. He graduated from the College of Medicine at the University of Illinois Chicago in 1983, and completed his internal medicine residency and nephrology fellowship at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri.

He specializes in autoimmune kidney disease, specifically on how the immune system interacts with the kidneys and causes renal inflammation and injury. His work includes both patient care and research, which together improve the way care is provided. He provides cutting edge care to patients who suffer from difficult and complex diseases mediated by the immune system by effectively combining patient care with kidney pathology and experimental therapeutics. In the new nephrology fellowship at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, he teaches students to continue his work into the future.

In 2012, he received the Donald V Unverferth Award for Scholarly Excellence and Mentoring in Medical Research. He has been the Lee A Hebert Distinguished Professor of Nephrology at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center since 2014. In 2015 and 2018, he was rated among the top 10 percent of physicians in the nation for patient satisfaction. He was named one of Castle Connolly’s “Regional Top Doctors” from 2015 to 2021 and has been one of “America’s Best Doctors” in Nephrology and Glomerular Diseases since 2005.