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The Renal Research Group
Funding

Significant funding for research in personalized therapy of hypertensive nephropathy

The project "Digital technology for personalised management and therapy of hypertensive nephropathy" received 20 million NOK funding from Helse-vest

work flow
a glimpse at the study design
Photo:
Hans-Peter Marti

Main content

Hypertensive nephropathy (HN) is the most frequent disorder leading to end-stage renal disease in Norway. At that stage, patients require dialysis and/or renal transplantation. Kidney biopsy, the diagnostic gold standard, is not entirely specific for HN and potentially dangerous. Current treatment is often unsuccessful.
These issues raise the need for a reliable non-invasive HN test allowing early diagnosis and patient monitoring, for better accuracy of histological diagnosis, and for more effective drug therapy. We approach these challenges with digital technology.
First, we will apply newly developed transcriptomics (RNA sequencing) of archival kidney biopsies with computation of transcriptional landscapes and investigate, which molecular features of HN increase biopsy accuracy and/or can be recovered in serum/urine specimens.
Then, statistical machine learning methods will be developed to integrate these omics-based findings with clinical and laboratory patient features to define diagnostic and/or prognostic panels. Individual panel factors will also serve as novel drug targets for the identification of drugs that we can repurpose to treat HN. We will evaluate the biologic effect of these drugs in vitro using new kidney-on-chip technology that simulates HN. We will then investigate drugs with the best in vitro effect for their capability to attenuate HN progression in silico, using pharmacometric disease progression modelling. Finally, we start to design a clinical trial. 

Professor Hans-Peter Marti has received 20 MNOK nok from Helse Vests stratigic intiative 2020 (helse-vest stratigiske satsinger) to implement the project.