Congratulations to Principal Investigator Marguerite Hatch, B.Sc., Ph.D. and Co-Investigator Jonathan Whittamore, Ph.D., who were recently awarded a new NIH R01 grant by the National Institutes of Health titled, “Intestinal Oxalate Transport and the Regulation of the Apical Slc26 Anion Exchange.” The grant will enable their research through February 2021.
A brief narrative of the study:
Given the clinically significant and serious consequences of elevated urinary oxalate concentrations that are associated with a number of diseases and conditions, there is still no effective pharmacological treatment to reduce urinary oxalate levels, which can lead to kidney stones, tissue deposition of oxalate salt and renal failure. While the principal route for oxalate excretion is the kidney, the intestine has been shown to make a substantial contribution to the enteric elimination, which should be exploited and not ignored. The studies proposed will specifically address a long-ignored gap in information about how these oxalate transport mechanisms, along the intestine, are regulated to coordinate the elimination of oxalate along the intestinal tract.