Fourth Annual Kidney-NExT Symposium: Inventing the future of kidney therapeutics

This annual one-day symposium, chaired by institute member of the Broad and faculty at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Dr. Anna Greka, will bring together leading stakeholders to discuss how we can advance the quest for novel therapeutics for kidney diseases, an area of tremendous unmet need. The Kidney-NExT Symposium (formerly Glom-NExT) is a unique forum for shared dialogue between academia and industry leaders, the FDA and patients from across the country to shape the future of kidney treatments.


Thursday April 12, 2018
Broad Institute,
415 Main St. Cambridge, MA

Symposium Program

9:00 am Welcome
Eric Lander and Anna Greka

Session 1

Towards precision medicines for kidney diseases

Chair: Kirk Campbell

9:15 am – 9:40 am Kidney organoids: a human model system for precision medicine?
Joseph Bonventre
9:40 am – 10:05 am Single cell genomics of the kidney
Benjamin Humphreys
10:05 am – 10:30 am Single cell genomics in lupus nephritis: an immunologist’s view
Nir Hacohen
10:30 am – 10:55 am A new approach to precision medicines for kidney diseases
Anna Greka
10:55 am – 11:10 am Coffee Break

Session 2

Keynote Address

Chair: Steve Somlo

11:10 am – 12:00 pm Lessons from decades in drug development
David Meeker
Former head of Sanofi-Genzyme, current CEO of KSQ Therapeutics
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm Lunch

Session 3

Biomarkers and clinical trials: new approaches

Chair: Myles Wolf

1:00 pm – 1:25 pm Kidney disease progression biomarkers
Matthias Kretzler
1:25 pm – 1:50 pm Clinical trial design and endpoints
Howard Trachtman

Session 4

Drug development redux: from rare to common (kidney) diseases

Chair: Ray Harris

1:50 pm – 2:15 pm The patient perspective
Kevin Fowler
2:15 pm – 2:40 pm The Broad/academia perspective
Martin Drysdale
2:40 pm – 3:05 pm The biopharma perspective
Anthony Muslin
3:05 pm – 3:30 pm The FDA perspective
Aliza Thompson

Roundtable discussion and brainstorming session: How can we do better?

Facilitator: Ray Harris

3:30 pm – 5:00 pm Leaders from academia, biotech/pharma, FDA and patient advocates will spearhead the discussion in this brainstorming session, where we will explore how we can impact the discovery of novel therapeutics for kidney diseases
5:00 pm Closing remarks
Anna Greka
  Reception to follow

Kidney Disease