Research Updates in Kidney and Urologic Health
Three Join DKUHD
In recent months, the Division of Kidney, Urologic, and Hematologic Diseases
(DKUHD) in the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney
Diseases (NIDDK) has welcomed three new members.
Terry Rogers Bishop, Ph.D., received her doctorate in genetics
from the University of Hawaii. As a graduate student, she researched the
identification and quantitation of regulated, nonglobin genes during erythropoiesis,
specifically the set of genes required for hemoglobin synthesis. She continued
this research under the mentorship of Dr. Samuel Boyer at the Howard Hughes
Medical Institute in Baltimore until she joined the faculty at the Johns
Hopkins School of Medicine. She maintained a joint appointment in the
Departments of Medicine and Pediatrics, while being actively involved
in the Human Genetics Program. Highlights of her research accomplishments
are cloning the gene encoding the second enzyme of the heme biosynthetic
pathway and discovering that the gene has two transcriptional promoters,
one of which is used exclusively in erythroid cells. She also adapted
a method of highly purifying erythroid progenitor cells and developed
a serum-free medium in which these cells could fully mature through five
cell divisions to form red blood cells in vitro. She joined the National
Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's Review Branch as a scientific review
administrator in 1999 and is now the Training and Careers Program director
for DKUHD.
Paul Eggers, Ph.D., has joined DKUHD as the program director of
kidney and urology epidemiology. Before coming to the National Institutes
of Health, Dr. Eggers was director of the Division of Beneficiary Research
in the Office of Strategic Planning at the Health Care Financing Administration
(HCFA). He began working on research and evaluation studies at HCFA in
1978 and conducted studies and evaluations of Medicare enrollment in HMOs,
the Medicare Prospective Payment System, physician payment reform, and
the hospice benefit. His major area of expertise is the End-Stage Renal
Disease (ESRD) Program. His research includes epidemiological studies
of mortality and morbidity among ESRD beneficiaries, transplantation studies,
and cost studies of dialysis and transplantation. At HCFA, he helped design
and evaluate a demonstration project enrolling ESRD beneficiaries in managed
care organizations. He has written more than 40 publications on various
issues relating to the Medicare program in general and ESRD in particular.
Thomas Hostetter, M.D., comes to NIDDK on leave from the University
of Minnesota, where he has been professor of medicine and director of
the division of renal diseases and hypertension for the past 15 years.
At NIDDK, he will be starting a kidney disease education program aimed
at heightening public awareness of chronic progressive renal disease.
His research interest has been the mechanisms of progressive renal injury.
He has served on the General Medicine B study section and on the Nephrology
Board of the American Board of Internal Medicine and recently completed
a term as president of the American Society of Nephrology.
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