Congratulations to Dr. Ashlee Ford Versypt for receiving the Health Research award

Thursday, June 29, 2017

Congratulations to Dr. Ashlee Ford Versypt, Assistant Professor in Chemical Engineering, who has just received a Health Research award from the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology. The title of Dr. Ford Versypt’s project is “Computational Modeling of the Onset of Diabetic Kidney Disease.”

In early diabetic kidney disease (DKD), kidney tissue damage is focused in glomeruli. Significant glomerular injury occurs before the abnormal leakage of proteins through glomeruli into urine is detectable. Continued damage ultimately leads to kidney failure. Therefore, it is critical to slow the rate of progression of DKD before irreversible glomerular injury occurs because these tissues cannot repair themselves. Diabetic high blood glucose is known to initiate DKD through various biochemical reaction networks in multiple cells of the glomeruli. The connections between the reaction networks and the interactions between all the cell types that result in glomerular injury in DKD are not completely understood.

The overall objective of Dr. Ford Versypt’s OCAST Health Research project is to create a computational model to simulate the biochemical and physical interactions between glucose, cell signaling pathways, and various cell types within glomeruli at the onset of DKD in advance of detection of proteinuria. Such a computational model can improve the understanding of the complex network of events involved in DKD. By detecting DKD at the onset through biomarkers identified by the model, treatments could be administered to slow the progression before significant damage occurs. The central hypothesis is that simultaneous concerted interactions between glucose-stimulated signaling pathways in multiple cell types within the glomeruli and the cross-talk between cell types are needed in order for hyperglycemia to progress to diabetic proteinuria.

The primary outcome of the project will be a computational platform that predicts glomerular injury in the early stages of DKD through a network of interactions in the three main glomerular cell types. The work will be useful for understanding the synchrony of key events that lead to diabetic kidney damage. With this approach, conditions can be identified that lead to emergent phenomena that cannot be observed by isolated in vitro studies but have been observed in vivo through invasive techniques. Improved understanding of the mechanism for the onset of DKD has the potential to expand drug targets for therapies to prevent or slow the progression of DKD.

"Schematic for the glomerular filtration barrier in the kidney to be modeled in CompuCell3D for multiscale chemical and cellular processes in tissues"