Grant: Project Grant

People who lose their kidney function require either dialysis or a kidney transplant to keep them alive. Given the lack of enough kidney donors available for transplantation, 80% of patients have to use dialysis which acts as an artificial kidney to remove waste from the body. There are two forms of dialysis: hemodialysis (HD) and peritoneal dialysis (PD). In PD, a special PD fluid is infused in the abdomen to filter out the waste and water through the stomach lining called the peritoneal membrane, while HD uses a machine in the hospital attached to the patient's blood system to clean up the blood. But PD has many advantages over HD: PD can be administered independently by patients in their homes, and patients on PD do better when they receive a kidney transplant and can be less careful about their dietary restraints. These factors greatly improve the quality-of-life of PD patients and also PD costs tens of thousands of dollars less per patient/year resulting in reduced healthcare costs. Currently, glucose (sugar) is commonly used in the PD fluid in order to remove the waste and water through the peritoneal membrane, but sugar causes many long-term problems for PD patients; it scars the peritoneal lining and eventually patients are unable to receive PD. Furthermore, too much sugar can cause diseases such as diabetes or more challenging in the control of diabetes. Our research group has designed a new "non-sugar" polymer to substitute glucose in the PD fluid. Our results demonstrate that this novel polymer is safer and more efficacious than the conventional glucose-based PD fluid in many different experiments. We are continuing to test the safety and efficacy this exciting new polymer in long-term studies that better approximate the human condition. We are a multidisciplinary team of medical doctors, scientists and drug development experts working together to develop a new PD fluid that will help many people with chronic kidney disease in Canada and around the world.