{"id":179354,"date":"2025-08-27T09:24:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T09:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/179354\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T09:24:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T09:24:13","slug":"new-ai-tools-from-penn-medicine-wharton-researchers-aim-to-personalize-kidney-disease-treatment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/179354\/","title":{"rendered":"New AI tools from Penn Medicine, Wharton researchers aim to personalize kidney disease treatment"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"lyd-592\"\/
\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia at night on Feb. 26, 2023.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCredit: Bamelak Duki<\/a> \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

New artificial intelligence tools and datasets developed by researchers at the Wharton School and the Perelman School of Medicine aim to personalize treatments for kidney disease patients.\n<\/p>\n

Katalin Susztak, director of the Penn\/CHOP Kidney Innovation Center<\/a>, and Wharton professor Nancy Zhang co-authored a paper<\/a> discussing CellSpectra \u2014 \u201ca computational tool that quantifies change in gene expression coordination across cellular functions\u201d \u2014\u00a0applied to kidney and lung cancer data. The technologies can \u201canalyze kidney disease at the cellular level to match the most effective treatments and speed up solutions,\u201d according to Penn Today<\/a>.\u00a0\n\t\t<\/p>\n

This atlas included \u201cover 1 million cells, providing a comprehensive understanding of cell types, cell states and gene expression variations” and creates a plot called the single cell reference report card for the patient that points out the most disregulated cell type in the kidney, Susztak told The Daily Pennsylvanian.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we did here together with Nancy Zhang is we created a very large data set which we call SISKA, [which was] developed to map individual patient samples to this large reference atlas,\u201d Susztak added.<\/p>\n

SISKA stands for \u201cSpecies Integrated Single cell Kidney Atlas.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe built CellSpectra to do what current methods cannot: analyze one patient\u2019s sample at a time, and interpret it in the context of species, disease, and therapy,\u201d Zhang told Penn Today.\n\t<\/p>\n

There are over 850 million people who have a kidney disease worldwide, according to the International Society of Nephrology<\/a>, with over a million dying of renal failure worldwide due to a lack of access to affordable treatment, according to the National Kidney Foundation<\/a>.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

New biomedical tools tools such as \u201csingle cell omics\u201d or \u201csingle cell gene expression\u201d allow for the characterization of every single cell in the kidney, Susztak said, adding that there are over 70 cell types just in the kidney.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cUsing these large data sets, statistical methods and AI tools, we will be able to bring omics methods to the clinic,\u201d she said. \u201cIt enables us to match patients with specific drugs that are already available, or we could generate new ones by targeting these genes and cell types.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Susztak\u2019s focus is kidney disease in the context of diabetes, which she said accounts for more than 50% of all kidney disease. It is \u201clargest single cause of renal failure in the US and worldwide,\u201d Susztak added.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Around ten years ago, Susztak championed the idea that more should be done for better patient characterization to enable new therapeutic developments for kidney disease.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWay back, actually, this was not so fashionable, and I was not able to convince the National Institute of Health to fund the study,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n

Susztak turned to industry to fund potential drug development to that end, which she said she found greater success at Penn.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very fortunate that Penn had a really good legal team who was able to put together pharma who is interested in diabetic kidney disease development with the academic centers\u2026 [to work] together in a non-competitive way,\u201d Susztak said, adding that because pharma has \u201cvested financial interest in direct development, [it was] very easy to convince everyone to work together in a non-competitive manner.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt shows quite a bit about pharma that they are able to put their immediate interest aside and are able to fund more discovery-based research,\u201d Susztak added.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Susztak said that she would encourage medical researchers to work with pharma, but \u201cevery funding mechanism has its own pluses and minuses.\u201d\u00a0\n\t\t<\/p>\n

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Get our newsletter, DP Daybreak, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.<\/p>\n

Susztak added that AI \u201chas incredible potential\u201d and is \u201cslightly misunderstood.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cUsing AI tools the right way really enables people\u2026 to do the same things, essentially faster, more precisely, having information available quickly and reasonably well,\u201d she said. \u201cOur newest thing [is that] we have created the largest AI tool which essentially incorporates 400 terabytes of data just about the kidney.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Susztak stressed that AI is not to replace doctors or pharma but to \u201cenable the people who are already in the [field] to better diagnose [and] treat patients\u201d alongside better matching patients \u201cwith [kidney disease] drugs and [to] identify new potential therapeutic targets.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Daily Pennsylvanian is an independent, student-run newspaper. Please consider making a donation<\/a> to support the coverage that shapes the University. Your generosity ensures a future of strong journalism at Penn.<\/p>\n

Donate<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia at night on Feb. 26, 2023. Credit: Bamelak Duki New artificial intelligence tools…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":179355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,8432,1322,210,50,1448,41929,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,98715],"class_list":{"0":"post-179354","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-beats","10":"tag-featured","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-pa","14":"tag-penn-medicine","15":"tag-pennsylvania","16":"tag-philadelphia","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa","23":"tag-wharton"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115100009717805692","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}