The program directors are a translational scientist, John Sedor, MD, and a basic scientist, Walter Boron, MD, PhD, who have complementary expertise and long training track records in career development of students, post-doctoral trainees and junior faculty. Drs. Sedor and Boron worked together as co- directors of the NIDDK-funded Cleveland Nephrology Training program since Dr. Boron’s arrival at CWRU in 2007. The program has been highly successful in preparing and retaining trainees for science related careers. Over the last 10 years, the T32 has supported 16 past (n=15) and current trainees (n=1), who have published 57 papers on work supported by the T32. Thirteen trainees, who have completed the program, remain in research or science-based careers as defined by Spruance and Rankin 4. In the last award cycle, all T32-funded trainees completed the program, all have first author publications and 50% have independent funding.
John Sedor, MD
Dr. Sedor has presented mentoring talks at the American Society of Nephrology Professional Development Symposium, University Hospitals Agre Resident Career Development Seminar, NIDDK National Diabetes Research Centers Medical Student Research meetings, National Kidney Foundation Young Investigator meetings and was on the planning committee for the recent NIDDK T32 Best Practices Meeting. He has trained
3 graduate students and 22 postdoctoral fellows; many hold academic appointments and several have extramural funding. Of the 10 junior CWRU faculty he recruited, when his primary clinical appointment was at MHS, eight (Huml, Dobre, O’Toole, Schelling, Sehgal, Dell, Drawz, Madahavan) have extramural K, R and/or U funding. The Sedor lab focuses on progressive kidney disease mechanisms using animal and stem cell models and omic tools. He is on the steering committees of 3 NIDDK consortia, NEPTUNE, CureGN and the Kidney Precision Medicine Project and is steering committee chair of the KidneyX innovation accelerator.
Walter Boron, MD, PhD
Dr. Boron returned to Cleveland to become the Chair of Physiology & Biophysics at CWRU SOM after 3 decades at Yale, where he also served as Chair of Cellular & Molecular Physiology. Over the last 10 years, he has mentored 16 predoctoral or postdoctoral trainees in the last 10 years; 13 remain in academic careers. Dr. Boron has three major areas of research, all of which bear on this proposed U2C/TL1 Training Network: (1) acid-base transporters/regulation of intracellular pH (pHi), (2) CO2/HCO− sensing, and (3) gas channels, which were discovered in the Boron lab. He has served on multiple editorial boards, been the editor of Physiological Reviews and Physiology and co-editor (with EL Boulpaep) of the textbook Medical Physiology. He cofounded Aeromics Inc., which is preparing for Phase 2 clinical trials of AER-271 for the treatment of cytotoxic cerebral edema in stroke. Among Dr. Boron’s honors are a MERIT Award (2002), the Homer Smith Award (2005), an honorary doctorate from Aarhus University (2014), and election to the National Academy of Medicine (2014) and Fellow, American Physiological Society (2015). In 2020, he was appointed, Distinguished University Professor, CWRU.