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Newswise — STONY BROOK, NY, May 1, 2025 – Preserving the health of kidneys in patients with diabetes can be challenging because the disease often brings complications over time. Sandeep Mallipattu, MD, Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Nephrology & Hypertension in the Department of Medicine in the Renaissance School of Medicine (RSOM) at Stony Brook University, investigates cell-to-cell communication within the kidneys, a process that helps maintain the health and function of kidneys.

Dr. Mallipattu’s latest research is supported by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), a branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), with a $2.76 million grant that runs through February 2029.

According to the National Kidney Foundation, close to one-third of patients with Type 1 diabetes and between 10 and 40 percent of those with Type 2 diabetes will eventually experience kidney failure.

“The major cause of kidney disease in the United States is diabetes, therefore understanding mechanisms of how diabetes can cause kidney disease are critical to identifying novel therapeutics to reverse disease,” says Dr. Mallipattu.

The NIDDK grant will help Dr. Mallipattu investigate specific aspects how cell-to-cell communication in the kidney operates and is critical for maintaining kidney health in diabetes. Specifically, he and his team are testing how a novel signaling cascade between two major cell types in the kidney contribute to the preservation of kidney health and thus potentially prevent diabetic kidney disease (DKD).

These cell types are podocytes, which are essentially used for a kidney filtration barrier; and the proximal tubule cells, critical for metabolic activity in the kidney and electrolyte management within the kidney.

Dr. Mallipattu points out that while podocyte loss and glomerular injury within the kidney are the inciting events in DKD, the severity of proximal tubular injury is the key determinant of DKD progression to end-stage kidney disease.

“We postulate that the podocytes can signal the proximal tubule to precondition it against injury and slow the progression of DKD in the setting of diabetes,” he explains.

He hopes that the team’s research on the signaling cascade between the two cell types proves this hypothesis.

This new research is related to previously published (in Nature Communications) research along with ongoing work by Dr. Mallipattu and colleagues that may determine whether a certain gene can help halt DKD. For more on the work, see this .

For more on the wider focus of Dr. Mallipattu’s kidney disease research through the RSOM, see this link to the .

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