Northwestern University O'Brien Kidney National Resource Center

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SUMMARY – NU-NRC OVERALL Kidney diseases affect 37 million Americans, placing them at major risk for cardiovascular events, other co- morbidities, and death. While there have been exciting recent advances in our field, to impact these staggering numbers, it is critical to identify new therapeutic targets, expand our understanding of disease pathogenesis and develop new methods to target specific cell types in the kidney. To do this, we must push disciplinary boundaries, build new discovery platforms and partner with orthogonal disciplines. A major unmet challenge in kidney research is the dearth of technologies and platforms that can incorporate the complexity and diversity of kidney structure, cellular phenotypes and function in their design and execution. The proposed Northwestern University National Resource Center (NU-NRC) will meet this challenge by leveraging innovations in the physical sciences to provide unique tools, reagents, and platforms to kidney researchers. By design, these resources take advantage of tissue and cellular diversity, making them powerful technologies for discovery- based kidney research and therapeutic development. The overarching theme of the NU-NRC is to adapt powerful physical sciences theory, tools, platforms, and approaches to advance kidney investigation in a Physical Sciences-Kidney Resource Center. The major goals of the Center are to A) harness physical science advances to provide new approaches to solve unmet challenges in kidney research and discovery, and B) to provide easy access to physical science tools, reagents and platforms to the broader kidney community to catalyze their research and spur innovation. We will accomplish these goals through four specific aims: 1. Establish a Biomedical Resource Core focused on established nanotechnology methods for cell-specific delivery of therapeutic and diagnostic payloads (small molecules and biologics) 2. Establish a Resource Development Core focused on nascent technologies in diverse areas of physical sciences to catalyse kidney research. 3. Establish an Administrative Core to oversee all operations of the Center and ensure new technologies are made readily available to the kidney research community and 4. Provide an immersive summer SciHigh research program for high school students. A dedicated, energetic and talented transdisciplinary scientific and administrative team at Northwestern and the University of Southern California will ensure NU-NRC fulfills its mission to transform kidney research through physical science solutions and move us closer to realizing its bold vision: physical science solutions to cure kidney diseases.