(Vienna, 09 March 2017) Dontscho Kerjaschki, retired Head of MedUni Vienna's Department of Pathology, was presented with the Award for Outstanding Basic Science Contributions to Nephrology by the European Renal Association – European Dialysis and Transplant Association (ERA-EDTA) at their Council meeting in London.
Two years ago, Kerjaschki also received the prestigious Homer W. Smith Award from the American Society of Nephrology ANS for his scientific life's work.
"These awards do not happen by chance but are richly deserved by those extraordinary scientists who have made a significant contribution to progress in their field over the course of their long careers and have contributed a wealth of knowledge," says colleague Rainer Oberbauer, Head of MedUni Vienna/Vienna General Hospital's Division of Nephrology and Dialysis, who is delighted about the award. "Professor Kerjaschki's oeuvre includes extensive works on understanding the pathophysiology of membranous glomerulonephritis, the molecular pathology of podocytes and also first descriptions of lymphangiogenesis and its function in the kidneys. In addition to this, Professor Kerjaschki and his team identified pathogenetic epitopes in other kidney diseases such as pauci-immune crescentic glomerulonephritis, for example. These groundbreaking works have a significance that goes far beyond nephrology and many of these findings are also of great importance in oncology and vascular medicine."
About Dontscho Kerjaschki
Dontscho Kerjaschki headed up MedUni Vienna's Department of Pathology from 1994 until 2015. The main focus of his extensive scientific work was the molecular causes of pathological changes in the renal glomeruli, which are responsible for the development and progression of kidney diseases. Dontscho Kerjaschki not only described the morphology of the changes but identified the underlying functional mechanisms.
Kerjaschki was born in Vienna where he also studied medicine, gained his postdoctoral qualification in pathology and then spent several years obtaining in-depth knowledge of cell biology in the laboratory of Nobel prizewinner G.E. Palade in Yale. He has published more than 250 articles in leading journals (e.g. Nature Medicine, Journal of Clinical Investigation) and for many years he was the European Associate Editor of the American Journal of Pathology. He is a member of the Editorial Boards of international journals (Journal of Clinical Investigation inter alia) and a busy reviewer for research applications, working groups and institutes of foreign universities. In 2015 he received the prestigious Homer W. Smith Award from the American Society of Nephrology.