A new laboratory test to find drugs that could slow diabetic kidney disease
Dr Bryan Conway from the University of Edinburgh has been awarded a start-up grant of £40,000 to develop a new laboratory test that could help identify drugs capable of stopping kidney inflammation and slowing the progression of kidney disease.
A need for more effective ways to slow kidney disease progression
Diabetic kidney disease (DKD) is responsible for around 1 in 3 people starting dialysis in the UK, making it the most common cause of kidney failure.
New treatments, including drugs that lower blood sugar and protect the kidneys, have helped slow disease progression. However, many people still experience worsening kidney function, showing that better treatments are urgently needed.
Building on kidney cell discoveries to develop new therapies
With previous funding from Kidney Research UK, Bryan and the team studied healthy and diseased human kidneys to understand what changes when kidneys are damaged.
They found that certain kidney cells called tubule cells become inflamed in diseases such as diabetes (blue cells in figure). These cells send signals that attract immune cells and promote scarring (yellow) in the kidney. This suggests they play a key role in driving kidney disease and could be an important target for new treatments.
Now, the team aims to turn these discoveries into a laboratory test that can identify drugs capable of stopping kidney inflammation before it causes irreversible damage.
“Kidney disease develops when different types of cells in the kidney, such as kidney cells, immune cells, and scar-forming cells, start to interact in harmful ways. We now understand more about how these cells communicate and influence each other, and we believe they are key drivers of disease. We are now looking at how we can intervene to stop this process.” Dr Bryan Conway.
Building a system to test potential drugs
In this project, Bryan and the team will grow “tubuloids”, which are small lab-grown versions of kidney tubules that behave like those found in an adult human kidney.
They will then trigger inflammation in these models using signals known to cause kidney injury, helping to recreate what happens in diseased kidneys.
Once developed, this system will be used as a drug-testing tool. It will allow researchers to quickly test thousands of different compounds to see if they can stop kidney tubule cells from becoming inflamed.
To do so, the team will add a built-in fluorescent system to the cells. When cells become inflamed, they will glow. If a drug works, the glow will switch off. This provides a simple way to see whether a treatment is effective.
What could this mean for patients?
If successful, this research could lead to new treatments that stop the earliest harmful changes in kidney cells before serious damage is done. This could slow down or even prevent chronic kidney disease from progressing and reduce the number of people who eventually need dialysis or a kidney transplant.
“By building a realistic model of the adult human kidney that includes inflammation, scarring signals, and immune cell interactions, we hope to greatly improve the chances of finding treatments that truly work for patients. This new laboratory test could speed up the discovery of much-needed drugs for many types of kidney disease.” Dr Bryan Conway.
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