Professor Sydney TANG is currently Clinical Professor of Medicine and Yu Professor in Nephrology at the University of Hong Kong. He underwent his training in Nephrology and Internal Medicine at the University of Hong Kong, King's College London, UK and the University of Washington, WA, USA.

Professor Tang is known for his contribution to both clinical and basic sciences in the field of nephrology. The research team has dissected some of the most important intracellular pathways through which excessive albumin, high glucose and glycated proteins induce toxicity to kidney tubule cells, the very cell type in the kidney that determines ultimate clinical outcomes in patients with chronic kidney disease. Albumin is a strong stimulus for tubular interleukin-8 overexpression through activation of nuclear factor-kappa B-dependent pathways, providing a mechanism for the occurrence of interstitial inflammatory cell infiltration that is observed in all forms of chronic proteinuric nephropathies. High glucose activates the Toll-like receptor that senses and reacts to diabetic injury in the kidney, and these observations are reproduced using gene knockout animal models, thus providing a novel therapeutic target for diabetic nephropathy which is currently the most prevalent disease leading to kidney failure in developed countries. In IgA nephropathy, a podocyte and glomerular-interstitial cross-talk pathway exists to mediate the occurrence of proteinuria and tubulointerstitial injury. The results of these observations have been published in J Clin Invest, J Am Soc Nephrol, and Kidney Int.

In the realm of clinical science, the focus is on the prevalence and mechanism of sleep apnea in patients with kidney disease and the treatment of IgA nephropathy, the commonest form of primary nephropathy worldwide. The prevalence of sleep apnea among peritoneal dialysis patients could be as high as 60-90%, and this is mainly related to fluid accumulation in the upper airway during sleep leading to obstructive sleep apnea, and accumulation of uremic toxins leading to central sleep apnea. In IgA nephropathy, both immunosuppressive and non-immunomodulating approaches may partially ameliorate proteinuria, a key prognostic biomarker in chronic nephropathies, in selected patient groups. The results of these observations have been published in Clin J Am Soc Nephrol, J Am Soc Nephrol, and Kidney Int.