Grant: Operating Grant

The advent of maintenance dialysis and kidney transplantation have resulted in a dramatic improvement in the survival of patients with chronic kidney disease, but at a large cost to the Canadian economy. Diseases of the renal glomerulus (the filtering unit of the kidney), especially those initiated by immunological processes("glomerulonephritis"), account for approximately half of the causes of chronic kidney disease in this country. Fundamental research into the disordered immune mechanisms that lead to glomerulonephritis is essential to the understanding of these diseases, an understanding that will ultimately lead to therapy and perhaps prevention. The studies proposed in this application will use a tissue-culture system and animal models of glomerulonephritis to characterize abnormalities contributing to the cause of the disease. Drugs will be administered to animals to determine if they reduce the severity of the disease. An analysis of kidney tissue from human patients with glomerulonephritis will be performed. The elucidation of basic mechanisms of the causes of disease and testing therapies in preclinical (animal) models is likely to be the most productive approach to the development of treatment strategies to human glomerulonephritis.