Background

Kidney damage cause acute kidney injury (AKI) and is associated with high healthcare costs and patient mortality.
Early detection of kidney damage is crucial for optimal treatment, but kidney damage is silent, i.e. kidney function is maintained until 50% kidney damage.
Current clinical markers reflect kidney function, e.g. blood creatinine levels and urine output, and are insensitive and slow to change after damage.
Valuable time is therefore lost, delaying treatment onset and increases the patients risk of permanent loss of kidney function.

Technology Overview

SDU researchers set out to obtain clinically remarkable and achievable improvements for patients receiving kidney transplantation, as today’s state-of-the-art biomarkers are poor at predicting kidney damage.
The researchers studied 22 kidney transplant patients receiving a kidney from a deceased donor.
The researchers identified a new biomarker that – within 24 hours of transplantation – could discriminate between bad (delayed graft function) and good (immediate graft function) outcome, and is directly correlated to kidney damage severity ().
The biomarker test has a high sensitivity and specificity, i.e. it accurately predicts which patients have kidney damage.

Stage of Development

Remarkable results found in kidney transplanted patients (a novel biomarker that can measure kidney damage and thus allow the healthcare professional to change treatment accordingly)
Similar results are expected to be found in other patient groups, but validation tests have to be performed to confirm the expectation

Benefits

Biomarker is solely expressed in a part of the kidney that is relevant for detecting kidney damage
The biomarker is a key transport protein, i.e. a critical component of the kidney’s pathophysiology
Biomarker presence in urine reflects a graded, dose-dependent response to damage.
Biomarker level returns to normal when injury ceases
Very fast detection of kidney damage, because our biomarker is a pre-formed protein and therefore does not require de-novo expression like e.g. NGAL, KIM-1 and calprotectin

Opportunity

SDU are currently looking for funding, collaborators and partners to validate our findings from kidney transplant patients in high-value markets such as acute kidney injury (AKI), diabetes, hypertension and clinical trials (drug development).

After validation, SDU will begin testing our biomarker in clinical trials

Novel Predictive Biomarker for Early Detection of Kidney Damage

Patents

IP Status

Seeking