NURTuRE - the first kidney biobank
More than 3 million people in the UK live with kidney disease, of those 30,000 rely on dialysis to stay alive. Research is helping kidney patients to live longer, healthier lives, but we want to go further, faster.
NURTuRE is a key resource for the kidney disease research community, supporting innovative approaches to change the lives of our patients.

The UK Renal Research Strategy recognised the need for a kidney biobank. Kidney Research UK has led the collaboration with industry and academia to launch NURTuRE (the National Unified Renal Translational Research Enterprise), the first kidney biobank covering England, Scotland and Wales.
NURTuRE provides a unique resource to support important new research designed to benefits those living with kidney disease, with the first two patient groups focusing on chronic kidney disease (CKD) and idiopathic nephrotic syndrome (INS). We will be working to develop a new group on acute kidney injury (AKI) from early 2024.
In particular, NURTURE supports studies looking at a range of key research areas including:
- Identifying pathways of injury and repair
- Investigating new targets for treatments
- Looking at what might lead to different responses to treatments
- Looking at new ways of measuring and monitoring the body’s progression through different stages of kidney disease, and response to treatment (known as ‘biomarkers’)
- Promoting collaboration between research groups to benefit patients
"NURTuRE offers a unique opportunity for researchers from universities, the NHS, pharmaceuticals companies and the patient community to work together to improve treatment and diagnosis of kidney disease. Kidney Research UK are proud to be a founding member of NURTuRE and we look forward to the first results from NURTuRE studies in 2023." Michael Nation, Director of NURTuRE at Kidney Research UK
Opportunity to join the NURTuRE team
Acute kidney injury: Front end data development, collection and co-ordination service provider
NURTuRE is a research collaboration involving a charity, academia, and industry. Led by Kidney Research UK, the aim is to create a national centralised biobank with linked data to facilitate and accelerate research. The first two cohorts were in chronic kidney disease (CKD) and idiopathic nephrotic syndrome (INS) and are nearing completion of the collection phase, and we are now planning a new cohort in acute kidney injury (AKI).
We now want to identify and select a data provider for the AKI cohort project to support the prospective data development, collection co-ordination and monitoring prior to amalgamation, integration and transfer to the NURTuRE centralised data warehouse facility.
The service provider requirements include:
- Secure and accredited hosted REDCAP service
- Development of Redcap system to meet project needs
- Data management
- Data quality reporting and support project outcomes
- Support the overall project manager
- Information governance
We welcome submissions from any front end research data service providers. For specification submission details please contact [email protected]