Charles E. Alpers MD

Dr. Alpers is the vice-chair of the Department of Pathology, director of the University of Washington Medicine Renal Pathology Service and a UW professor of pathology and medicine. He is an expert in diagnostic and experimental renal pathology.

Dr. Alpers' clinical research has focused on growth factor molecules that control the expression of kidney diseases, on the kidney injury that occurs in patients with diabetes and on kidney injury that occurs in patients infected with Hepatitis C and human immunodeficiency viruses. His research lab utilizes model systems to identify mechanisms of diabetic renal injury and glomerulonephritis and to test therapies that can reverse these diseases.

Dr. Alpers earned his bachelor's degree from Yale University and his M.D. from the University of Rochester School Of Medicine (N.Y.) in 1978. Following medical school, he trained as an intern and resident in internal medicine at Boston University. He subsequently did a residency in anatomic and clinical pathology at the University of California, San Francisco, and a fellowship in diagnostic and experimental kidney pathology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. After completing his fellowship training, Dr. Alpers joined the faculty of the UW in 1986 to assume directorship of the Renal Pathology Service and the Electron Microscopy Laboratory of the UW Medical Center. The Renal Pathology Service is the largest in the Northwest, and is the leading referral center for renal biopsy diagnoses for patients from Alaska, Washington, Idaho and parts of Montana and Nevada.