PKD Life - Spring 2020 - 22

The Kidney
Project

Developers of the artificial
kidney hope to eliminate
the need for dialysis and ease
the shortage of donor kidneys.

By Debra Gordon

to an implantable artificial kidney began not
T hewithroada fancy
laboratory full of scientists but with a
horrific car accident more than 20 years ago. Witnessing
that accident prompted William Fissell, M.D., to drop
out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where
he was studying physics, and become an emergency
medical technician.

22

That, in turn, led to hours
in an ambulance transporting people who needed dialysis. "I fell in love with these
patients from that experience," says Dr. Fissell, who is
now an associate professor
of medicine at Vanderbilt
University in Nashville.
"They were soldiering on.
They wanted to live and be
human, and they were succeeding despite the overwhelmingly crushing burden
of their illness."
Fast forward a few years to
when Dr. Fissell was finishing
his medical residency at Case
Western Reserve University

in Cleveland. Dragged to an
office party, he spied another
man standing by the appetizer table. "I knew he was
an engineer," Dr. Fissell says.
Within minutes of meeting,
Dr. Fissell was sharing his
idea for an artificial kidney
with Shuvo Roy, Ph.D., an
electrical engineer who had
just completed his doctorate studies and started as
a biomedical engineer at
the neighboring Cleveland Clinic.
"He encouraged me to
think about how I could use
my skills and talents to help
dialysis patients," says Dr. Roy,

ILLUSTRATION: MOHAMMED HANEEFA NIZAMUDEEN/GETTY IMAGES

THE RESEARCH REPORT

PKD LIFE * SPRING 2020

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PKD Life - Spring 2020

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