Richard A. Zager

Dr. Richard Zager is a graduate of Northwestern University School of Medicine. He completed his Internal Medicine residency at UCLA and the University of Washington Medical School, and his Nephrology training at Boston University and Harvard Medical School. He served as a Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center for over 35 years, and he is currently a Professor Emeritus at both institutions. He is a board-certified internist and nephrologist and has had extensive clinical experience in internal medicine, nephrology, and ICU medicine.

For the past 35 years Dr. Zager’s research has focused on the pathophysiology and treatment of acute kidney injury. His work has been supported by 35 years of grant support from the National Institutes of Health as well as by sponsored research agreements with multiple pharmaceutical companies. His work has resulted in over 200 peer-reviewed articles which have been published in major nephrology, and basic science, journals (e.g., Journal of Clinical Investigation, Proceedings National Academy of Science.) This work has described injury-induced kidney tubular cell alterations which subsequently lead the emergence of the issue resistance to further damage (i.e., so called tissue “preconditioning”). Over the past 5 years, Dr. Zager has worked to translate this “preconditioning” phenomenon to the clinical arena. This effort has led to the development of both RBT-1 and RBT-3 which can evoke the preconditioning state. Through his work with Renibus Therapeutics, these basic laboratory observations are being tested in a variety of clinical settings.