Romulo Hurtado
Weill Medical College of Cornell University, NY·Physiology
Urine does not simply drain from the kidney to the bladder. The upper urinary tract, the muscular tube system connecting them, squeezes in waves, called peristalsis, to push waste along.
- Fields
Physiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Genetics
- Topics
upper urinary tract
peristalsis
pacemaker cells
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2028
What they work on
- Define the transcriptional signaling mechanisms required for formation of HCN channel-expressing pacemaker cells and for functional peristalsis in the upper urinary tract, using a mutant mouse that lacks these pacemakers but has normal smooth muscle.
- Identify the transcriptional protein complexes that assemble to control upper urinary tract pacemaker development, filling a major gap in understanding how this organ forms.
- Characterize the pathophysiology by which pacemaker defects produce vesicoureteral reflux and hydronephrosis in the mutant mouse model, and generate genetic and protein markers as candidate diagnostic and drug targets.
More about the research
When those waves fail, pressure builds and tissue is damaged. Hydronephrosis, swelling and damage of kidney tissue from back-pressure, is the leading cause of kidney failure in children. Vesicoureteral reflux (VUR), in which urine flows backward from bladder to kidney, affects about 2% of children and leads to end-stage kidney disease in 10-25% of chronic cases. Strikingly, about half of all urinary tract dilation happens with no physical blockage, meaning the cause is functional and largely unknown. Kidney disease overall affects 15% of the population and costs roughly $100 billion a year.
Why it matters
Half of urinary tract dilation cases have no physical obstruction, leaving children with reflux or hydronephrosis without a clear diagnosis or targeted treatment. Identifying the genes and protein complexes that build urinary pacemaker cells could yield markers for diagnosing functional peristalsis defects and candidate targets for drugs that restore normal urine flow, potentially preventing progression to kidney failure.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Kourosh Kalayeh
University of Michigan, MI·Biomedical Engineering
Establish normal dynamic contrast-enhanced ultrasound (DCEUS) kidney blood-flow values in healthy volunteers, accounting for biological sex and left versus right kidney.
John Bankston
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus, CO·Biophysics
Determine how single-tail lipids, including polyunsaturated fatty acids, lysophosphatidyl cholines and N-acyl amino acids, bind to ASIC3, an acid-sensing ion channel, and how they boost or open it.
John Wiener
Duke University, NC·Medicine & Clinical Research
Continue following newborns and young children with myelomeningocele through the UMPIRE protocol of clinical, laboratory, imaging and urodynamic testing into school age, to assess the protocol's long-term benefits and risks.
The school
Weill Medical College of Cornell University: 35 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 59 research doctorates a year.
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