Although antifibrotic agents can contribute to suppressing renal function decline when administered in combination with existing treatments for chronic kidney disease, drugs targeting kidney fibrosis have yet to reach the clinic.

Scientists from INSERM and affiliated organizations presented findings from their work that aimed to investigate the involvement of heat shock protein 27 (HSP27) in the activation and pathological accumulation of parietal epithelial cells (PEC) during crescentic glomerulonephritis (CrGN).

Previous studies have shown that NETosis, a specialized form of neutrophil-specific cell death, is involved in the pathogenesis of diabetes.

The knockout of Col4a3 in mice is used as a model of Alport syndrome. Knockout mice develop glomerular disease associated with neutral lipid accumulation in the kidney and progressive renal failure, which can be treated with lipid-lowering agents.

Researchers at the Stony Brook University Renaissance School of Medicine performed a screening in search of Kruppel-like factor 15 (KLF15) agonists for treating proteinuric injuries in the kidney.

Patients receiving a kidney transplant and who are positive for BK virus (BKV) are at risk of losing their transplant due to BKV reactivation. At this time, there are no antiviral options available for the prevention of BKV-associated nephropathy. Researchers from Aicuris Anti-infective Cures GmbH presented preclinical data on AIC-468, an antisense RNA therapy that inhibits the splicing process of a viral mRNA encoding a protein critical for BKV replication.

Purespring Therapeutics Ltd. has raised £80 million (US$104.6 million) in a series B, putting it on course to be the first to take a gene therapy for a kidney disease into the clinic. The money enables the company to move the lead program, PS-002, for the treatment of IgA nephropathy to clinical proof of concept and advance programs in other complement-mediated kidney diseases, and in an undisclosed glomerular kidney disease.