Before the first cohort of nephrology fellows entered the hallowed grounds of the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratories (MDIBL) in 2008, this treasured playground for comparative physiology was a summer home to the famed Dr. Homer Smith, one of the fathers of nephrology. His prose reads like poetry:
“Superficially, it might be said that the function of the kidneys is to make urine; but in a more considered view one can say that the kidneys make the stuff of philosophy itself.”
The discoveries made in the labs of the MDIBL underpin the most essential aspects of what we understand about renal tubular function today. Many of these breakthroughs are outlined in this brief history by Dr. David Evans, long-time researcher at MDIBL.
When the Renal Fellow Network’s founder Dr. Nathan Hellman and current faculty co-lead Dr. Matthew Sparks, esteemed members of this inaugural group of fellows, first glimpsed the water views from the docks and the sky full of stars through the crisp evening Maine air, they kindled a friendship that would propel them both into this amazing world of nephrology. When their colleagues fellows from all over the country descended on this unique setting just a stone’s throw away from Acadia National Park, they bonded over the wonders of nephrology, as each experimental module designed by the creators of the Renal Fellows Course at MDIBL were modeled after how the discoveries were actually made decades earlier, at the very same laboratory benches, with the very same model systems (such as the rectal gland of the Squalus acanthias). And if that weren’t enough, every summer since 2008 to the present, nephrology fellows have been mentored through these experiments by the very same people who made these discoveries, such as Dr. Patricio Silva and Dr. Ray Frizzell. And when you were done re-creating and re-living this science, you could all have lunch together and listen to the origin stories of these great and kind people.
Thanks to the efforts of the MDIBL Renal Fellows course creator and its greatest champion, Dr. Mark Zeidel (Chair of Medicine at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, MA), tuition for every fellow to attend this magical 1-week course has been supported by the National Institutes for Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). For many years, in an effort to ensure funding will continue, we have brainstormed how best to show the impact that this course has had on the future careers of its participants and the field of nephrology research as a whole. Though we did publish this paper in 2016, we acknowledge that this data cannot fully express the full impact. Also, it’s been another 10 years (or nearly 300 more nephrology fellows!) since this publication. To bring these experiences to light in the most genuine way possible, we asked course alumni to contribute their own thoughts about how their time at MDIBL impacted their careers. The result is this latest segment of the Renal Fellow Network.
Over the next few months, we will present these pieces to you. They are a testament to a unique experience for trainees in any field of medicine, one that we are so fortunate to call our own. They will remind you of why you love nephrology and your colleagues. For those readers who have been lucky enough to participate in one of these courses over the last 18 years, these recollections will bring up memories of your own. They reminded me of my own recollections from this post in 2018. I even found countless lab module presentations on my hard drive, co-created with fellow colleagues that I now count among my friends.
For those who have yet to have the opportunity to make the trip to MDIBL, we hope that these pieces will inspire you to become a part of nephrology history in the very near future.
Jeffrey William, MD
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Associate Program Director, Division of Nephrology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Reviewed by: Matthew A. Sparks, M.D. Srinath, Yadlapalli, M.D
