Tag Archive for: EGFR

colored x-ray showing kidneys and spine

New report advances improved way to diagnose kidney disease

colored x-ray showing kidneys and spine

The findings outline a new race-free approach to diagnose kidney disease, recommending the adoption of the new eGFR 2021 CKD EPI creatinine equation.

Patients with kidney disease will benefit from an improved approach, according to a new report.

The findings outline a new race-free approach to diagnose kidney disease, recommending the adoption of the new eGFR 2021 CKD EPI creatinine equation. This calculation estimates kidney function without a race variable. The report also recommends increased use of cystatin C combined with serum creatinine as a confirmatory assessment of eGFR or kidney function.

The effort is being spearheaded by a team of national nephrology experts that includes Marva Moxey-Mims, M.D., chief of the Division of Nephrology at Children’s National Hospital.

“This final report is important in recommending a uniform approach to the calculation of eGFR without the inclusion of race,” Dr. Moxey-Mims says. “This will avoid a piecemeal approach where eGFR is calculated differently at different health care facilities, potentially causing confusion.”

The final report, published in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases and the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, was drafted with considerable input from hundreds of patients, family members, medical students, clinicians, scientists, health professionals and other stakeholders. This will help achieve consensus for an unbiased and most reasonably accurate estimation of GFR so that laboratories, clinicians, patients and public health officials can make informed decisions to ensure equity and personalized care for patients with kidney diseases.

“Patients, professionals and other stakeholders can have confidence in this estimate that is relying solely on biologic measures. Hopefully, these can evolve even further as the science progresses,” Dr. Moxey-Mims says. “My hope is that health systems and labs will adopt these changes expeditiously.”

structure of EGFR

Study suggests EGFR inhibition reverses alterations induced by hypoxia

structure of EGFR

The study suggests that specific molecular responses modulated by EGFR (seen here) may be targeted as a therapeutic strategy for HX injury in the neonatal brain.

Hypoxic (HX) encephalopathy is a major cause of death and neurodevelopmental disability in newborns. While it is known that decreased oxygen and energy failure in the brain lead to neuronal cell death, the cellular and molecular mechanisms of HX-induced neuronal and glial cell damage are still largely undefined.

Panagiotis Kratimenos, M.D., and colleagues from the Center for Neuroscience Research at the Children’s National Research Institute, discovered increased expression of activated-epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) in affected cortical areas of neonates with HX and decided to further investigate the functional role of EGFR-related signaling pathways in the cellular and molecular changes induced by HX in the cerebral cortex.

The researchers found that HX-induced activation of EGFR and Ca2+/calmodulin kinase IV (CaMKIV) caused cell death and pathological alterations in neurons and glia. EGFR blockade inhibited CaMKIV activation, attenuated neuronal loss, increased oligodendrocyte proliferation and reversed HX-induced astrogliosis.

The researchers also performed, for the first time, high-throughput transcriptomic analysis of the cortex to define molecular responses to HX and to uncover genes specifically involved in EGFR signaling in brain injury. Their results indicate that specific molecular responses modulated by EGFR may be targeted as a therapeutic strategy for HX injury in the neonatal brain.

This study defines many new exciting avenues of scientific exploration to further elucidate the beneficial impact of EGFR blockade on perinatal brain injury at the cellular and molecular levels. This analysis could potentially result in the identification of new therapeutic targets associated with EGFR signaling in the developing mammalian brain that are linked with specific long-term abnormalities caused by perinatal brain injury.

Children’s National researchers who contributed to this study include Panagiotis Kratimenos, M.D., Ioannis Koutroulis, M.D., Ph.D., M.B.A., Susan Knoblach, Ph.D., Payal Banerjee, Surajit Bhattacharya, Ph.D., Maria Almira-Suarez, M.D., and Vittorio Gallo, Ph.D.

Read the full article in iScience.