By Levi Gadye and Nicholas Weiler
A team of researchers from UC San Francisco, Vanderbilt University Medical School (VUMC), and Silicon Kidney are among the winners of the “KidneyX: Redesign Dialysis” prize competition for their design of an innovative, implantable hemofilter dialysis system that would enable patients to safely and effectively treat kidney failure at home.
KidneyX, a public–private partnership between the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the American Society of Nephrology (ASN), was founded to “accelerate innovation in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of kidney diseases.”
As one of 15 inaugural winners of the KidneyX Redesign Dialysis Phase I competition, announced April 29, 2019 in Washington DC, a team led by UCSF's Shuvo Roy, PhD, and VUMC nephrologist William Fissell, MD, will receive $75,000 to accelerate the development of their proposed implantable dialysis device. More importantly, they will work closely with leadership of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Medicare, and HHS to accelerate the translation of their concept into a patient-ready device. KidneyX will award $500,000 to three teams as part of Phase II of the competition in the spring of 2020.
Roy is a faculty member in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, a joint department of the Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine, and a member of UCSF’s new Health Innovation via Engineering (HIVE) program.
