A UCLA professor recently received a $3 million grant to study the properties of kidney proteins, according to a Monday UCLA press release.
Ira Kurtz, a professor and chief of the nephrology division of the UCLA department of medicine, received the money from the Donald T. Sterling Charitable Foundation.
Kurtz conducts research about the the structural properties of key proteins in the kidney and how they affect functions during health and disease by deciphering the atomic structure of proteins which contribute to kidney disease.
Twenty-five million kidney patients in the United States need drugs for treatment every day, and a disproportionate number of them are African Americans, Latinos and other minorities, Kurtz said in the statement.
Kurtz and his team aim to discover new molecular approaches for developing drugs to treat patients with various kidney disorders.
“Determining the structure of these disease-causing proteins is vital for designing very specific drugs,” Kurtz said in the press release. “If we are successful, we have the great benefit of being able to use much lower doses of a particular drug, which is very beneficial to patients, since side effects and unwanted symptoms are significantly reduced.”
Compiled by Margaux Moores-Tanvier, Bruin contributor.