Dr. Marshall Stoller is a professor and Vice Chair at the UCSF Department of Urology. He is a well-known expert in kidney stone surgery and nephrolithiasis research, which continues to be centered around the treatment and understanding the pathogenesis of urinary stone disease. Dr. Chi works closely with Dr. Stoller, and they have received several NIH fundings to support their studies.
Dr. Sunita Ho is a professor at the UCSF School of Dentistry. Her laboratory has a strong focus on mechanics, materials, and investigating adaptation of tissues/interfaces. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of research, she collaborates with Dr. Marshall Stoller and Dr. Thomas Chi to analyze kidney stone specimens with micro-CT scan and mapping of biochemical expressions.
The overall goal of the Kapahi lab is to understand how an organism responds to nutrient status to influence health and disease including kidney stone. They utilize worms, flies and mice as model systems to understand how nutrients influence changes in physiology and disease processes. They also collaborate with Dr. Chi and Dr. Stoller to undertake interdisciplinary approaches to translate findings from multiple animal models.
Dr. Chi closely collaborates with Dr. David Killilea from the Children Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI). His research program examines the complex behavior of metals within diverse biological systems. Dr. Killilea’s group is focused on developing novel, sensitive biomarkers to better understand the pharmacodynamics of key metals and reveal new targets for disease intervention.
http://www.chori.org/Principal_Investigators/Killilea_David/killilea_overview.html
Dr. Michael Keiser leads the Keiser Lab at UCSF in combining machine learning and chemical biology methods to investigate how small molecules perturb entire protein networks to achieve their therapeutic effects. He collaborates with Dr. Thomas Chi to study in correlation between drugs and kidney stone formation.
Dr. Thomas Chi has a close research collaboration with a Chinese urologist group, led by Prof. Jianxing Li from Tsinghua Chang Gung Hospital in Beijing, China. Prof. Li is one of the main investigators in the multi-institution ReSKU: the Registry for Stones of the Kidney and Ureter. Prof. Li is also renowned in ultrasound-guided percutaneous stone surgery.