Developing Novel Integrated Point-of-Care Systems for Chronic Kidney Disease Biomarkers Measurements

慢性肾脏疾病（CKD）是一个日益严重的健康问题，影响着大约120万加拿大人。未经治疗的CKD可以 导致肾衰竭，这种情况需要透析治疗。一旦接受透析，患者的健康状况就会变差， 生活质量低下。此外，透析是加拿大卫生系统提供的非常昂贵的治疗， 每名患者每年大约55，000 - 80，000美元。如果早期发现CKD，可以预防肾衰竭和透析。为 因此，国家肾脏基金会宣布早期识别和治疗CKD是优先事项。 不幸的是，我们目前发现有肾衰竭风险的患者的方法并不完美。新的测试（生物标志物） 可以更好地发现肾衰竭高危患者，但现在使用这些测试， 诊所是困难和昂贵的。基于微流控芯片实验室（Microfluidic Lab-on-Chip，简称ICIC）的系统可以使这些新测试的使用变得更加容易。 而且更便宜。在这个项目中，我们将开发方便和易于使用的微流控芯片系统， 这些新的测试（hsCRP，NT-proBNP，FGF-23，IL-6，microRNA）。一旦开发出来，我们将测试这些系统 改善真实的世界中肾病患者的护理。

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a growing health problem that affects roughly 1.2 million Canadians. Untreated, CKD can lead to kidney failure, a condition that requires treatment with dialysis. Once on dialysis, patients experience poor health and a low quality of life. In addition, dialysis is a very expensive treatment for the Canadian Health System to provide, costing roughly $55,000-$80,000 per patient per year. Kidney failure and dialysis can be prevented if CKD is recognized early. For this reason, the National Kidney Foundation has declared early identification and treatment of CKD to be a priority. Unfortunately, our current ways of finding patients who are at risk of kidney failure are not perfect. Newer tests (biomarkers) have been created that could make finding patients at high risk of kidney failure better, but right now using these tests in clinics is difficult and expensive. Microfluidic Lab-on-Chip (LOC) based systems could make using these new tests easier and less expensive. In this project, we will develop convenient and easy-to-use microfluidic LOC systems for doing 5 of these new tests (hsCRP, NT-proBNP, FGF-23, IL-6, microRNA). Once developed we will then test how well these systems improve the care of patients with kidney disease in the real world.