Janos Peti Peterdi, MD, PhD

Dr. Janos Peti-Peterdi is professor and acting vice-chair at the Departments of Physiology and Neuroscience, and Medicine, and director of the Vito M Campese MD/UKRO Kidney Research Center at the University of Southern California. He received his MD (1994) and PhD (1998) degrees from the Semmelweis University Medical School, Budapest, Hungary, and postdoctoral training in renal physiology/nephrology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (1997-2001). He joined the faculty at USC Keck School of Medicine in 2004, where he received tenure (2007).

Dr. Peti-Peterdi is dedicated to finding a cure for chronic kidney disease. His laboratory at USC examines kidney and cardiovascular pathophysiology—more specifically the mechanisms of the healthy kidney that control the maintenance of body fluid, electrolyte balance and blood pressure—and how they are changed in the disease state. The main goal of his laboratory is to identify the key molecular players in various renal pathologies as potential therapeutic targets, with the aim of developing new approaches for the treatment of kidney and cardiovascular diseases. Dr. Peti-Peterdi’s group played an important role in identifying the cellular and molecular processes of a key anatomical site within the kidney—the juxtaglomerular apparatus or JGA—which controls the amount of blood flow and filtration through the kidneys.

During the past decade, the laboratory pioneered several applications of intravital (live animal or in vivo) multiphoton microscopy allowing researchers to quantitatively visualize the most basic (patho) physiological parameters of kidney and nephron function, including tissue activity of a hormone called renin, which regulates the body’s mean arterial blood pressure. The Peti-Peterdi lab is using this imaging technology to examine complex regulatory and disease mechanisms in intact kidney tissue in various animal models, exploring chronic kidney disease, acute kidney injury, nephrotic syndrome (which causes excessive release of protein in urine), focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (scar tissue in the filtering unit of the kidney which can lead to nephrotic syndrome), hypertension and diabetes. Dr. Peti-Peterdi has established and is director of the NIH-funded Multi-Photon Microscopy Core at USC for high-resolution intravital imaging of intact organs –kidney, liver, spleen, pancreas, skin, eye—in small laboratory animals. Over the past 5 years he has trained more than 30 investigators from around the world on the use of intravital imaging of the mouse kidney. His recent imaging studies addressed and solved a critical technical barrier in kidney research, allowing researchers for the first time to quantitatively visualize the function of cellular and molecular elements of the kidney filter (glomerulus) in vivo, to examine their roles in the development of disease.

Most recently, the Peti-Peterdi lab deployed serial multiphoton microscopy to track the fate and function of individual cells in the same region of the living intact kidney over several days, during disease development. This approach has led to significant advances in understanding the highly dynamic kidney tissue and glomerular environment, and the mechanisms of glomerular injury and regeneration. Ongoing work in the laboratory is studying the fate and function of renal stem cells, and their role in endogenous kidney repair. Based on targeting the molecular mechanisms that control a newly discovered tissue repair process, the Peti-Peterdi lab is currently developing a new regenerative therapeutic approach for the treatment of chronic kidney diseases.

Dr. Peti-Peterdi’s active research program is funded by the NIH, the American Heart and Diabetes Associations. Dr. Peti-Peterdi is member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, European Academy of Sciences and Arts, American Physiological Society Renal Section, American and International Society of Nephrology, and the American Heart Association High Blood Pressure Research and Kidney Councils. He is incoming Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Physiology Renal Physiology.

• Blood Vessels 'Sniff' Gut Microbes to Regulate Blood Pressure (03/04/2013)
• New Molecular Link Between Diabetes And Kidney Failure (06/08/2008)

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