Professor of Pathology and Genomic Medicine, Academic Institute
Full Member, Research Institute
Houston Methodist
Weill Cornell Medical College
After completing his training in renal pathology in 1984, Dr. Truong joined the Department of Pathology at Baylor College of Medicine. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1990, and Professor in 1996. He currently holds full-time faculty appointment in the Department of Pathology, Weill Medical College of Cornell University and in the Houston Methodist Research Institute. He also hold adjunct faculty appointment in the Departments of Pathology and Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine. He has been the attending pathologist for the Harris County Hospital District and Houston Methodist since 1984, and has served as Chief of Nephropathology since 1989. Dr. Truong also serves as the Director of the Pathology Core for the interdepartmental NIH-funded O’Brien Research Center on Renal Inflammation. Well recognized in the area of nephropathology, Dr. Truong actively participates in scholarly activities in this field as section editor and peer-reviewer for many scientific journals, as leader in professional societies, and as lecturer in national and international scientific meetings.
Dr. Truong´s research interests involve surgical pathology and nephropathology. In the area of surgical pathology, he is interested in using morphology to define new diseases and to improve the diagnostic accuracy of known diseases. He combines traditional clinicopathologic observation with novel immunohistochemical techniques to study case materials drawn from more than 30,000 surgical pathology specimens submitted to the Department of Pathology and Genomic Medicine annually. In the area of clinical nephropathology, Dr. Truong is interested in assessing the pathogenesis and natural behavior of several specific renal diseases using a clinico-pathologic approach, and has access to more than 10,000 renal biopsies accumulated in the renal pathology laboratory suitable for this purpose. In the area of experimental nephropathology, Dr. Truong’s research focuses on the pathogenesis of primary chronic tubulointerstitial nephritis. He has established a model of chronic obstructive uropathy by unilateral ligation of the ureter and has focused on cell cycle abnormality, including apoptosis and cell proliferation of tubular cells and interstitial cells as a crucial element in chronic tubulointerstitial injury. He is currently investigating preconditioning as a mechanism to attenuate acute tubular cell injury. He recently made the novel observation that activation of cell survival mechanisms, including the PI3 kinase pathway and survivin, may serve as important protective mechanisms. He also collaborates extensively with other investigators in the Texas Medical Center and elsewhere in terms of morphologic support and structure-function correlation studies on various renal diseases.
