Dr. Yanlin Wang Wins VA’s SCSI Award

Yanlin Wang, MD, PhD, FASN, professor and chief of nephrology at UConn Health, has won the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Senior Clinician Scientist Investigator (SCSI) Award. The award recognizes Dr. Wang as an outstanding clinician scientist engaged in ongoing VA research for kidney disorders while providing high-quality, timely clinical care to veterans.

Dr. Wang’s research focuses on novel therapeutic targets for chronic kidney disease (CKD). His most recently funded grant, a third consecutive renewal of a VA Merit Award, will allow him to study the role of exosomal DNA-cGAS signaling in the development of CKD. The SCSI Award will allow for Dr. Wang’s VA Merit grant extension of another 4 years.

Previous VA research by Dr. Wang’s team demonstrated how inflammatory cells are recruited into the kidney during the disease’s development and the specific disrupting roles played by both chemokine CXCL16 and histone deacetylase 3.

“In our next research studies, we plan to examine and characterize the specific role of macrophages to further understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms of [CKD] in an experimental model of hypertension,” said Dr. Wang. “Results from our studies will provide new understandings of the molecular mechanisms of kidney inflammation and fibrosis and could lead to development of novel therapeutic strategies for the treatment of [CKD].”