Dietary and Social Stressor Laboratories
Basic Science Dietary and Social Stressor Laboratory (B-DSSL)
The B-DSSL will provide investigators with comprehensive services and resources for preclinical research to determine the mechanistic underpinnings of human health disparity stressors, using mice as a model system.
Resources and services include the following:
- Study design
- Humanized mouse diet protocols
Comprehensive mouse kidney phenotyping for diet and stress mechanisms
- Metabolic Cage and Clearance Studies
- GFR measurements
- Telemetric Blood pressure Monitoring
- Optical Clearing
- Isolated Nephron segment Ex Vivo Analysis
- Small Sample RNAseq in Isolated Nephron Segments
Indirect calorimetry and Lipid and carbohydrate metabolism phenotyping
- Oxymax and CLAMS metabolic cages to monitor food intake, water intake, physical activity, metabolic rate (VO2), respiratory exchange ratio (carbohydrate vs fat oxidation), and energy expenditure
Immunological manifestations of dietary and social stressors in the kidney
- Protocols, training, and service to isolate and characterize kidney immune cells by flow cytometric analysis (FACS)
Microbiome; germ-free sample banks
Mouse biobank of dietary and social stress models
Director
Paul Welling, M.D.
Joseph S. and Ester Handler Professor of Medicine
Dr. Welling is a world-renowned kidney scientist with broad expertise in exploring diet and stress mechanisms with mice from gene to pathway to whole animal pathophysiology. He considers it an honor to tackle one of the most significant and timely issues in nephrology to achieve kidney health care equity.
Faculty
Hyun Jun Jung, Ph.D.
Instructor of Medicine
Hyun Jun's integrative approach aims to establish a basic-translational research program based on a systems and computational biology approach to developing therapeutic strategies for treatment of renal failure. The multidisciplinary approach to his research interests is based on multi-omics, bioinformatics, and cell state dynamics in kidney physiology.
Sanjeev Noel, Ph.D., M.Phil., M.Sc.
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Sanjeev provides scientific expertise on the molecular, cellular and immunologic aspects of kidney immune cells. He also provides technical expertise related to advanced spectral flow cytometry and wet lab aspects of single cell and spatial transcriptomic approaches to study kidney immune cells.
Jennifer L. Pluznick, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Physiology
Jennifer is a basic scientist with expertise in renal physiology, G-protein-coupled receptors, and the gut microbiome. She serves as the co-director of the Resource Development core.
G. William Wong, Ph.D.
Professor of Physiology
Will is a metabolic physiologist. He provides intellectual, technical, and experimental inputs into how impaired kidney function may affect systemic glucose and lipid metabolism.
Clinical Science Dietary and Social Stressor Laboratory Services (C-DSSL)
Through a health equity lens, the C-DSSL will provide consultative services, validated protocols with well-established quality assurance/quality control procedures, and access to materials and equipment, with appropriate external resources. The C-DSSL will execute pilot studies or larger research projects and potential access to our community-based clinical research unit.
Resources and services include the following:
Clinical study design
Dietary assessment and Dietary data
- Feeding studies modeled on the DASH trials
Archived and Completed studies
- Large longitudinal cohort study data from racially and socioeconomically diverse populations
- Publicly available datasets
- EMR registries
Datasets with Deep phenotyping
- Genomics
- Proteomics
- Metabolomics
- Images
Samples
- Stored biospecimens from completed studies
- Healthy Volunteers for Reference Range
- Prospective Remnant Sample collection
Behavioral intervention studies
Translational studies in the community
Biostatistical support
Biomarker measurement
- Immunoassays
- Clinical Chemistry
Biorepository support
- Processing allocating, short- and long-term sample storage
Director
Faculty
Lawrence Appel, M.D., M.P.H.
Director of ProHealth
Past Director, Welch Center
Epidemiology and Clinical Research, The Johns Hopkins University
Dr. Lawrence Appel is a clinical investigator who has focused his career on preventing and controlling elevated blood pressure and its complications, including kidney disease. As co-director of the Biomedical Resource core, he leverages his research on nutrition, blood pressure and kidney disease along with his leadership of the Welch Center and ProHealth to lead this core, which nicely integrates with virtuality all of his major research interests.
