Clinical Phenotyping Resource and Biobank Core of the Michigan O'Brien Renal Center

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) affects approximately 26 million Americans and
disproportionately manifests in specific race and ethnic groups. Patients burdened with CKD
have significant morbidity and reduced life expectancy. In addition to excessive suffering
and lost productivity, the cost of managing this epidemic has reached $40 billion annually.
The recognition that CKD is a major public health problem is reflected in the fourteen
objectives outlined in Healthy People 2020 to begin to address the disease burden.
Advancement in approaches to halt CKD progression has been slow despite growing global
awareness of disease burden.

This O'Brien Kidney Research Core will create opportunities for novel insights through
characterization of tissue profiles that will define new disease markers and molecular
pathways and will be available to all kidney investigators on the www. It will thereby
fundamentally alter the starting point for research into prevention of progression of these
kidney diseases. C-PROBE is an essential element of the center grant and presents a
biomedical resource core consisting of: (1) clinical phenotyping (that is, systematic
identification of observable physical and biomedical characteristics) of kidney disease
patients including the accurate measurement of kidney function; and (2) a specimen BioBank
which will store blood, urine and kidney tissue samples. A key component of C-PROBE is
therefore that it contains a proven mechanism to collect samples from high risk groups
including minorities, at the institutions of University of Michigan Health System, St. John
Hospital, Wayne State University in Michigan, John H. Stroger Hospital in Illinois, Temple
University Health System in Pennsylvania, and Levine Children's Hospital in North Carolina.
This mechanism will feed the other Cores and provide biomedical investigators with approved
projects the access to a dynamic pool of well characterized high risk kidney disease patients
and their biological specimens to conduct high caliber translational research.