Dr Louise Oni MBChB, MRCPCH, MA, PhD

Personal Statement

Dr. Louise Oni is an international leader in Paediatric Nephrology. She has an interest in rare inflammatory kidney diseases in children where she contributes to the local, national, and international progression of paediatric nephrology. She is passionate about age-inclusion, equitable access and improving the efficiency of research to benefit children.

She is a Senior Lecturer in Paediatric Nephrology at the University of Liverpool and Honorary Consultant Paediatric Nephrologist at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital. She holds an Honorary appointment as an Associate Professor of Paediatric Nephrology at the Centre for Kidney and Bladder Disease, UCL, London. Throughout her career, she has achieved formal qualifications with a medical degree, master’s in medical ethics and law, and a clinical PhD. She is a Higher Education Academy Senior Fellow in recognition of her strengths in teaching and her career has included prizes, publications, financial income, book chapters, editorial roles, curriculum development and regular invited speaker roles at a variety of conferences.

Academically, she leads a kidney inflammatory workstream consisting of a multi-professional group of researchers focused on delivering translational research to stop kidney failure in children. Following a recognised unmet need in IgA vasculitis (Henoch Schonlein Purpura), Dr. Oni established The IgA vasculitis study, recruiting >170 children with a biorepository of >3000 serum, plasma, urine, and saliva samples for discovery research to date. In early 2023, she intentionally aimed to broaden the research portfolio from a single disease model to cover all glomerulonephritis and secured funding for ‘The Glom-omic study’ actively recruiting >100 patients of all ages across the region. She has successfully chaired a national working group consisting of multi-professionals to produce the first ever, nationally endorsed, UK guidelines for the management of IgA vasculitis in children. This provided a platform to embark on leading a project to harmonise the management of all forms of childhood glomerulonephritis in the UK and in a her role to support adult guidelines for IgAV. To date she has supervised 3 post-doctoral research associates and 10 post graduate students to completion. She is frequently invited to conduct external PhD viva’s in recognition of her expertise and she has a rapidly growing portfolio of academic outputs (>60 peer reviewed papers and >£11M grant income as lead applicant). She has a particular interest in childhood IgA vasculitis and childhood-onset lupus nephritis working in close partnership with world leading colleagues in the Experimental Arthritis Treatment Centre for Children and the UK JSLE Study group.

Dr. Oni is leading a large project to establish a national Translational Rare Kidney Disease Centre called the LifeArc-KRUK Centre for Rare Kidney Disease known as the 'UK Kidney Ecosystem'. This privileged opportunity means that she represents a co-designed, age-inclusive, equitable project that unites an entire speciality to efficiently transform the translational pathway into a positive research environment. This opportunity has accelerated her national and international standing and it has potential global impact. Dr. Oni is a member of the ESPN glomerular diseases working group supporting the delivery of multi-centre projects, the International IgAN Network Research group representing children, the PRINTO/PReS working group for IgA vasculitis and the European IgA vasculitis working group to develop position statements for the management of adult IgAV (EUGAVAS). She works in close partnership with industry colleagues, providing expert consultancy roles for >9 global pharmaceutical companies including acting as the UK chief investigator for commercial studies, and she enjoys being members of several data safety monitoring boards, including for the National Institute of Health (NIH). Clinically, she has an interest in glomerular diseases and supports specialist clinics. As these diseases are rare, she has established a national renal inflammatory forum to holds regular meetings to discuss complex clinical cases between Paediatric Nephrology and Rheumatology colleagues, providing a supportive environment to discuss patient care, enhance education and strengthen cross speciality collaborations.

Dr. Oni thoroughly enjoys collaboration and welcomes opportunities to work in partnership with colleagues from all professional backgrounds in a quest to solve challenging rare kidney diseases.