About the Lab

The Sarwal Lab is dedicated to understanding the mechanisms of injury in organ failure, with particular emphasis on acute and chronic kidney disease, and injury in organ transplantation. Unravelling the specific molecular pathways of tissue injury is a key to understanding the pathogenesis of disease and to better design new therapies and drugs. We have successfully applied high throughput genomic (RNa arrays, microRNA arrays, RNA seq, Exome Seq), proteomic, metabolomic and  antibiomic (protein arrays) technologies, combined with customized and applied bioinformatics, to discover common pathways of injury in acute rejection across all soli organ transplants, the heterogeneity of acute graft rejection and graft versus host disease.

Additionally the lab focusses on the discovery and validation of new blood based biomarkers for improved monitoring and management of transplant recipients, so as to minimize the side effects of drugs, and to proactively predict the onset of acute rejection in the organ, prior to any clinical functional decline, and without the requirement of a protocol biopsy. These assays, such as the Solid Organ Rejection Test in kidney transplantation (kSORT)and heart transplantation (cSORT) and the test for SPOntaneous Tolerance for kidney (kSPOT) and liver (lSPOT), can provide for the first time, personalized drug dosing for the transplant patient, dosing immunosuppression not by protocol (as currently done in most centers), but to immune risk.

The Sarwal Lab has been a central mechanistic lab for various NIH funded RCT (SNSO1, IMPACT), and pharmaceutical sponsored mechanistic studies on randomized, interventional trials. Dr. Sarwal, as a pediatric transplant nephrologist and immunologist, has also been a lead clinical investigator for RCT in transplantation and renal diseases.

The Sarwal Lab has received funds from philanthropy and many organizations, inclusive of the NIH (NIAID, NIDDK, NHLBI), NKF, Bristol Meyers Squibb, Astellas, Novartis, Roche and Genentech.