Duke Pathology fourth-year resident Bangchen Wang, MD, PhD, presented a poster titled “Infection as a Trigger of Acute, Transient Glomerular Deposition of Clonal Immunoglobulins” at the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) Kidney Week meeting, attended by over 12,000 nephrologists and nephropathologists from Nov. 2-5, 2023, in Philadelphia, PA.
Wang’s work documents infection as a possible trigger for clonal immunoglobulin deposition and shows that it’s sometimes reversible. Clonal rearrangements of immunoglobulin genes are a hallmark of B lymphoid malignancies. In addition to being of utility for initial diagnosis or evaluation of residual/recurrent disease, these rearrangements can lead to production of clonal immunoglobulins (or parts of them such as light chains) that can lodge in various organs, often in or near vascular spaces. Though normal antibodies are crucial infection fighters, deposits of clonal immunoglobulins or light chains often cause significant end-organ damage. The kidney, a highly vascular organ, is a common target; the result can be acute or chronic renal failure.
At the meeting, Wang won two accolades. He garnered the Renal Pathology Society’s Liliane Striker Young Investigator Award for his work (sponsored by David Howell, MD, PhD); and received an invitation from Dr. Sharon Adler, Editor-in-Chief of the journal Glomerular Diseases, to submit a manuscript based on his findings.
The Liliane Striker Young Investigator Award was established in 2006 to encourage excellence in the area of renal pathology research by young investigators. Wang was selected from those nominated based on the quality of his abstract submitted to the 2023 ASN meeting. Wang received $300 and a certificate.