The American Heart Association is presenting one of its 2022 Distinguished Scientist awards to Susan Quaggin, MD, the chief and Charles Horace Mayo Professor of Nephrology and Hypertension in the Department of Medicine. The award honors members who have significantly advanced the understanding of cardiovascular, stroke or brain health.
All seven AHA 2022 Distinguished Scientist awardees will be recognized during the association’s Scientific Sessions 2022, which will be held in person in Chicago and virtually Nov. 5-7.
“I am honored to receive this award on behalf of an incredibly talented team of mentees and collaborators that I have had the privilege to work with over many years. It is particularly meaningful to me as a nephrologist because of the critical relationships between the kidney and heart to advance human health,” Quaggin said.
Quaggin, who is also director of the Feinberg Cardiovascular and Renal Research Institute, has conducted extensive research related to kidney health. Her work in molecular biology around transcription factor action within developing kidneys has helped advance transgenic mouse models used to study kidney disease. Her discoveries related to vascular endothelial growth factor led to connections between growth factor inhibition and thrombotic microangiopathy and kidney failure. Her work has inspired new protocols for renal assessments and led to new insight into pre-eclampsia. Her discoveries also are applicable to caring for patients who are at high risk for cardiovascular mortality because of kidney disease.
Quaggin is the current elected president of the American Society of Nephrology and is an elected councilor of the Association of American Physicians. She earned a Doctor of Medicine from the University of Toronto. She completed a fellowship in nephrology at the University of Toronto and completed two post-doctoral fellowships, one in molecular biology of kidney development at the Igarashi Lab at Yale University and one in mouse genetics at the Rossant Lab at the University of Toronto.
She has published more than 120 peer-reviewed articles, and is the deputy editor of Journal of Clinical Investigation, the coeditor of Seldin and Geibisch: The Kidney and coeditor of the pathophysiology section of Current Opinion in Nephrology and Hypertension Renal Physiology. She was previously recognized by the American Heart Association in 2012 with the Donald Seldin Lectureship Award and is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Investigators.
