Professor of Medicine and Genetics
Katalin Susztak, MD, PhD is a Professor of Medicine and Genetics at the University of Pennsylvania, she is a physician scientist who aims to understand the genetics and molecular mechanism of kidney disease development, with the ultimate goal of finding new, more effective therapies. More than 30 million Americans suffer from kidney disease, a condition that disproportionately affects Black individuals. Dr. Katalin Susztak has made fundamental discoveries in defining the mechanisms of kidney disease with the potential to develop new, targeted therapies. She not only mapped the genetic architecture of kidney function, but also pioneered kidney tissue banking and the integration of single cell omics datasets for a deeper mechanistic understanding. Combining human genetics with state-of-the-art transcriptomic, epigenomic and single cell analyses, Susztak has identified nearly a dozen new kidney disease risk genes and established the previously unappreciated role of proximal tubule cells in kidney function regulation. She was the first to demonstrate the causal role of APOL1 risk variants, explaining the higher risk of kidney disease, sepsis and COVID severity specifically in Black people. She delineated cellular pathways of APOL1 toxicity enabling the development of targeted therapeutics to address these significant health disparities. Susztak has generously made her comprehensive omics datasets available to the public. Asco-director of the Penn/CHOP Kidney Innovation Center and founder of the Transformative Research In Diabetic Nephropathy study, a unique academic/industry partnership she is working to identify and test novel therapies that can improve the lives of those with kidney disease and reduce health inequalities.