Perspectives: From Bedside to Bench.

THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSIOLOGY-Renal Physiology is pleased to announce a new series of articles called Perspectives: From Bedside to Bench. This reversal of the usual expression “bench to bedside” indicates that the flow of information in these articles is from the clinical experience to the basic research arena. These invited review articles will be written by clinician scientists who actively participate in the care of patients with cardiovascular, renal, or urological diseases. The authors will be leading experts who have a broad range of knowledge from basic biological processes to clinical management of a specific human disease. Each article will focus on a disease or a particular aspect of a disease and will consist of a succinct summary of the current state of knowledge both in terms of the basic science as well as current clinical care and therapies. Each article will end in a series of questions or statements that, if answered, would lead to new approaches to prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of human diseases. These articles have the potential to further stimulate the dialogue and interactions between basic and clinical researchers. In the first Perspectives published in this new series. Hall and Gbadegesin have provided an eloquent review of the current biology and clinical management of inherited nephrotic syndrome (NS). They summarize the available information on the genetics of this disease and clinical management of patients with NS and convincingly argue that this is a disease of podocytes. The article concludes by identifying the need for researchers to focus on establishing better in vivo and in vitro models systems. We are excited about this new series of articles and believe that it will serve as a forum to bring together basic scientists and clinicians to work together to cure or to provide innovative new treatments for humans with cardiovascular, renal, and bladder diseases.