Ellis D. Avner, MD

Ellis Avner, MD, was appointed director for Children's Research Institute in 2004. He also serves as associate dean for Research and professor of Pediatrics and Physiology at The Medical College of Wisconsin. Dr. Avner received his academic degree in Religion from Princeton University and his medical degree from the University Of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He served his internship and residency at the Children's Hospital in Boston, where he also completed his fellowship in pediatric nephrology.

Dr. Avner's faculty career began in 1980 at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He moved to Seattle in 1988 where he was a professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine and division chief of Pediatric Nephrology at Children's Hospital and Medical Center. Dr. Avner was appointed chairman of Pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University and chief medical officer at Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in 1995, posts held until his move to Children's Research Institute.

He has held leadership positions in numerous professional organizations including the Society of Pediatric Research, the International Pediatric Nephrology Association, the American Society of Transplantation and the Polycystic Kidney Disease Foundation. He serves as past president of the American Society of Pediatric Nephrology and the Council of American Kidney Societies, and served as an elected member of the Standing and Executive Committee of the International Pediatric Association. Dr. Avner has received numerous national and international awards. In 2008, he was awarded the Henry L. Barnett Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field of Pediatric Nephrology.

Dr. Avner serves on the editorial board of several key journals in the areas of nephrology and developmental biology and is the senior editor of the standard textbook, Pediatric Nephrology, 6th edition, 2009. He is the author of more than 260 original articles and chapters in the area of renal developmental biology, polycystic kidney disease and pediatric nephrology. Dr. Avner currently directs one of only two federally-funded Research Centers of Excellence in Pediatric Nephrology in the U.S., and the only center that focuses on polycystic kidney disease in children. The National Institutes of Health, private foundations and industry have continuously funded Dr. Avner's laboratory program for the last 27 years. He has generated more than $35 million of extramural research funding in that period.

Dr. Avner's research focuses on key mediators in the pathophysiology of polycystic kidney disease, and most recently has identified unique signaling pathways triggered by mutations in the genes which, when mutated, cause autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease and autosomal recessive polycystic kidney disease. He participated in the multi-institutional effort that led to the identification of the ARPKD gene (pkhd1) in 2004. Since that time, his laboratory has published seminal work describing key intermediates immediately downstream from primary gene mutations that cause cyst formation and progressive enlargement with kidney failure in ADPKD and ARPKD. Current pre-clinical work has genetically and pharmacologically targeted these intermediates in vitro and in vivo. This work now is being translated into new, disease-specific therapies for human polycystic kidney disease.