Professional Background

Dr. Christopher J. Ward was born and raised in Scotland and received his medical training at Edinburgh University qualifying in 1986. He then did a PhD in immunology at the University of Birmingham, England before joining the laboratory of Prof Peter Harris in Oxford. Dr. Ward was closely involved in the positional cloning of the tuberous sclerosis type 2 (TSC2) gene and the polycystic kidney disease type 1 (PKD1) gene and developed a range of antibody reagents designed to detect the product of the PKD1 gene, polycystin-1. In 2000, Drs. Ward and Harris moved to the Mayo Clinic and identified the gene for autosomal recessive polycystic kidney disease (PKHD1) using the pck rat model which is orthologous to PKHD1. Again, Dr. Ward developed antibody reagents to the product of PKHD1, fibrocystin, as well as generating two mouse models of the disease. In collaboration with Dr. Marie Hogan, Dr. Ward showed that extracellular vesicles contain the products of the three major human PKD genes and did an extensive proteomic analysis on these. This survey then lead to the development of a test for ADPKD and to the formulation of the exosome cilium interaction theory (ECIT). This idea suggests that extracellular vesicles, released into the urine flow, can transmit a `urocrine’ signal by interacting with primary cilia and that polycystic kidney disease is due to a failure of this novel signaling pathway.

• MBChB, General Medicine, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland
• Post Doctoral Fellowship, Genetics, Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine (Institute of Molecular Medicine (IMM)), Oxford, England
• Other, Genetics, Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine and Mayo Clinic, Oxford, England