Kids Kidney Research

Kids Kidney Research are delighted to announce that they have agreed to fund two new research projects, both of which will start in September.

Dr Moin Saleem of Bristol University is researching "A mechanistic link between plasma factors and podocyte dysfunction in Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis".     Nephrotic syndrome is a disease of kidney filtration, whereby huge amounts of protein are lost in the urine due to a defect in the primary filtering cell of the kidney, the podocyte. In affected children this leads to swelling (oedema), susceptibility to infections, clotting risk and eventually kidney failure. The treatment is often poorly effective, and involves long courses of toxic immunosuppression A particularly difficult complication is that the disease can rapidly recur in a transplanted kidney. This has led to the theory that the disease is caused by abnormalities in circulating plasma.   Find out more about this project by clicking here.

Paul Winyard of the Institute of Child Health, Great Ormond Street, is researching "Developing unique human renal progenitor cell lines -- towards novel therapies for congenital and acquired kidney diseases?"     Development of the kidney involves interactions between only two cells types that differentiate into nearly all of the different tissues in the adult kidney. Development sometimes goes wrong leading to malformed kidneys, and many genes in developing kidneys are also reactivated in diseases of the mature kidney.  Find out more about this project by clicking here.

Details of all the projects that we have funded can be found on the Recent Research Projects page.