Michael G. S. Shashaty, MD, MSCE

My career is focused in critical care medicine, clinical emergencies, and epidemiologic and translational research studies of the risks for and mechanisms of acute organ dysfunction, primarily acute kidney injury (AKI).

Trained in internal medicine, pulmonary diseases, and critical care medicine, I practice clinically in the medical intensive care unit (ICU) and with the Critical Care Outreach and Procedure Service (CCOPS) at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP). I am the CCOPS service lead and Rapid Response Medical Director at HUP, working with a multidisciplinary team to provide oversight, to design and conduct training, and to pursue quality improvement initiatives in clinical emergencies and bedside procedures. Our team also conducts research designed to better recognize and rescue non-ICU inpatients with incipient critical illness.

I am the principal investigator of the Lung Transplant Outcomes Group–Acute Kidney Injury (LTOG-AKI) study, a multicenter prospective cohort of lung transplant recipients (n>1900) designed to study the clinical and molecular epidemiology of post-lung transplant AKI. The primary focus of this study is to determine clinical characteristics and novel blood and urine biomarkers that are useful for AKI prediction and may provide insight into molecular mechanisms of AKI after transplantation.

I am also the principal investigator for the ongoing Penn Trauma Organ Dysfunction Study (PETROS), a cohort of critically ill trauma patients (n>1400), and a co-investigator in Penn’s Molecular Epidemiology of Sepsis in the ICU (MESSI) cohort, for which I lead studies of AKI. Current areas of study in these cohorts include elucidating mechanisms underlying the association of obesity and AKI, circulating cell-free DNA as a mechanistic contributor to AKI and ARDS, genetic risk factors for AKI, and.drug nephrotoxicity in critical illness.

These research and clinical efforts are supported by a large number of outstanding mentors, colleagues, mentees, and trainees with whom I have the great fortune to work and from whom I am constantly learning.