Diabetes Spotlight: Susan Bailey Gurley, MD, PhD—Charting Hypertension and Diabetic Nephropathy Through Mouse Models

A key question for scientists as they raced to understand SARS-CoV-2: what was the human entry point for the virus that causes COVID-19? The answer, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), was a protein Susan Gurley had studied for decades, not as a virologist but as a nephrologist. “I still study ACE2 in the context of kidney function,” Gurley says. “Hypertension. Blood pressure regulation. But most people who study ACE2 are interested in its connection to COVID.”