Scott Wenderfer

MD, PhD

Investigator and Division Head, Division of Nephrology, BC Children's Hospital

Kidney disease is an important cause of mortality and morbidity in children as well as adults. Immune-mediated kidney diseases are a major cause of childhood-onset kidney failure, requiring dialysis and kidney transplantation. The kidney is a complex organ with many different cell types and many different functions. The kidney is comprised of hundreds of thousands of nephrons which filter blood and generate urine. Specialized blood vessels called glomeruli form the filtration barrier, and tubules lined with many types of specialized epithelial cells process the filtrate, before it becomes urine. Immune cells and humoral factors such as immunoglobulins and complement components can become dysregulated in the kidney and lead to kidney dysfunction. Treating immune-mediated kidney diseases requires in depth understanding of immunology as well as nephrology.