Identifying New Molecular Pathways and Therapeutic Targets in Diabetic Kidney Disease

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Diabetic kidney disease (DKD) is the leading cause of kidney failure in the world and increasing at alarming rates due to the diabetes-inducing lifestyles we live. Currently the treatments for DKD are inadequate and many patients develop kidney failure needing dialysis or a kidney transplant. If this happens these patients are more likely to suffer from cardiovascular problems such as heart attacks and stroke and are much more likely to die prematurely.Work by our laboratory has shown that a cell in the filtering unit of the kidney called the podocyte is important in the development of DKD and that the major hormone in diabetes, insulin, is able to beneficially signal to this cell. When podocyte-insulin signalling is lost it is detrimental to kidney function and kidney disease develops. We have developed a drug screening assay to identify new therapies that make the podocyte more insulin-sensitive and this project has identified a cell target we would like to follow up. We intend studying this target in mouse models of DKD and human podocyte cells in dishes to clarify if it might be a good treatment for patients with diabetic kidney disease in the future.