Russell W. Chesney, M.D.
Professor and Chair of Pediatrics

Russell Chesney is a well-known basic and clinical researcher in pediatrics and pediatric nephrology.  He also serves as Chair of Pediatrics at the UTHSC. Dr. Chesney served as Editor in Chief of Pediatric Nephrology, the international journal of this discipline, from 1997 through the end of 2004. He has a keen interest in the history of pediatric nephrology. In recognition of his contributions to the specialty of pediatric nephrology, he was the 2004 recipient of the Henry Barnett award from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the 2005 recipient of the Founder’s Award from the American Society of Pediatric Nephrology. He is co-director of the state Center of Excellence in Genomics and Bioinformatics, which has received more than 10 million dollars in state funding and thirteen-fold that amount in extramural (principally NIH) funding. This center provides grant support in the range of $10,000 to $20,000 for pilot studies throughout the College of Medicine that are related to genomics. Dr. Chesney has collaborated with investigators in the departments of Molecular Sciences and Physiology.

Dr. Chesney has investigated the regulation of renal tubular epithelial amino acid transport in his laboratory for the last 30 years using cellular, molecular and genomic techniques with the amino acid taurine used as a model. Working with Dr. Xiaobin Han, they cloned the gene for the rat taurine transporter and demonstrated that its expression can be regulated by a variety of mechanisms including dietary exposure as well as a variety of transcriptional factors. Dr. Chesney's work has focused on factors regulating taurine transport and their relationship to cell volume regulation as a means of protecting against renal damage in cell death. Dr. Chesney and Dr. Han are collaboratung to create cell lines and lines of genetically altered mice to test the influence of alterations in the expression of the taurine transporter by the chemotherapeutic agent cisplatin. It is anticipated that these studies will help define the role of taurine in protection against renal damage and to better understand the nature of the renal and cell volume regulation of the taurine transporter gene in both disease and health.

In 2004, Dr. Chesney presented in a Kidney International Forum on Childhood Nephrotic Syndrome. All members of the Division of Pediatric Nephrology participated in the discussion.