Denver Brown, MD

2025 KidneyCure Research Scholar Grant

Institution: Children's National Hospital/George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences

Project Title: Metabolic Acidosis and Growth in a Heterogeneous Pediatric CKD Population: A Target Trial Emulation Study

How would you sum up your overall research focus in one sentence?

My research focuses on adding to, and increasing, evidence-based approaches to managing chronic kidney disease (CKD) in children with a particular focus on metabolic acidosis in pediatric CKD.

Provide a brief overview of the research you will conduct with help from the grant.

I aim to use the support to investigate the impact of treating metabolic acidosis on linear growth in children with CKD because poor linear growth is a frequent occurrence in the pediatric CKD population. In lieu of a traditional clinical trial, I will use novel statistical methods and real-world clinical data aggregated from 11 institutions to conduct an emulated trial. Target trial emulation is a relatively novel research approach that uses observational patient data to emulate a clinical trial that can test the effect of a treatment or intervention. To date, target trial emulation has rarely been used in the pediatric population but poses great benefit as enrolling enough patients for a traditional randomized controlled trial in children with CKD is not always feasible due to the rare nature of kidney disease in children.

What inspired you to focus your research in this area?

Poor linear growth affects up to 35% of the pediatric CKD population and has been associated with poor health and quality of life outcomes. Given this, it is important to understand risk factors for poor growth as well as identify and quantify the benefit of treatment agents.

What impact do you hope your research will have on patients?

I hope my research contributes to decreasing morbidity in pediatric patients with CKD.

What are your career goals at the end of the grant period? Five years out? Ten years out?

My ultimate goal is to be an expert in pediatric clinical trials. With the support of this award, I hope to gain skills in advanced statistical approaches that can be leveraged to conduct novel pediatric CKD focused trials and studies.

What are the major challenges facing nephrology research today?

Pediatric CKD research can be especially challenging because kidney disease is rare in children. Despite being rare in this population, CKD has a consequential impact on morbidity and mortality. As such, alternative approaches such as target trial emulation offer an important avenue to address this barrier.

What advice would you give to others to encourage them to apply for this grant funding?

Applying for grants can be exhausting because you put a lot of time and energy into each application. What's been really great about the KidneyCure funding mechanism is getting feedback on your application (and it's very thorough and thoughtful) and the ability to resubmit. Don't get discouraged if not selected on the first admission- review the feedback and resubmit!

Something you may not know about me is…

My oldest brother is a living-donor kidney transplant recipient. He and my younger brother (the donor) are thriving 15 years post-transplant!

In my free time, I like to…

Go to orange theory and read (I'm in an awesome book club with my former co-fellows)!