Abby Terlouw: Harvard Summer Research Program in Kidney Medicine
On her first day at her Harvard internship, Abby Terlouw had to pull out a map to show everyone where Arkansas was. The only one from the South, she appreciated the diverse viewpoints the big city offered: “One day there were fifteen people in the lunch room and I counted twelve different countries with four native English speakers. And as the only person from the South, I get to share my unique viewpoint too.”
Terlouw, an Honors College Fellow and biomedical engineering major from Bentonville, spent a busy summer studying kidney cells through a $750,000 microscope. She participated in the highly selective Harvard Summer Research Program in Kidney Medicine, an institute supported by a grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive Disorders. She worked at the prestigious Massachusetts General Hospital to chart the way the protein aquaporin-2 moves water through the kidney. This research is important for people suffering from diabetes insipidus, an irregularity that can be hereditary, incited by lithium in bipolar medications or even caused by a knock to the head. It stops the kidney from concentrating urine so people with this condition have to drink up to 12 liters of water a day to keep from getting dangerously dehydrated.
Terlouw hopes her research with Dr. Dennis Brown, a leading figure in the field of nephrology, will help determine which drugs have the best effect on mobilizing aquaporin-2. Terlouw was one of four Harvard Summer Research Program students selected to present a poster last November at the American Society of Nephrology Conference in Chicago, a meeting of the nation’s top kidney researchers.
Dr. Brown says he hopes she’ll become a nephrologist, “My prediction is that she’ll go a long way if she continues with this attitude. She’s shown great resourcefulness, independence, and courage as well. It’s not easy to come into a place as well known as Harvard, because you don’t know who you’re going to meet in the corridor.”
Terlouw is starting medical school this fall at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston.
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