Series: ACTSI Investigators and ARRA Awards at Work

Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), the NIH provided stimulus grants which will lead to new discoveries, create new jobs, and provide additional educational opportunities for students. Over the next few weeks the eRoundup will review some of the ACTSI's ARRA projects.

A Metabolomic Approach to Discovering Biomarkers for ADPKD, Arlene Chapman, MD, Emory University

Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) is the most prevalent inherited renal disease, accounting for 4% of the end-stage renal disease population. Detection of renal cysts utilizing renal imaging has been the most common method of diagnosis of this disease; however, many affected individuals do not demonstrate renal cystic disease until the fourth decade of life. At present, other than genotyping, there is no test to diagnose the disease in its earliest stages and genotyping is successful in identifying mutations only 85% of the time.

This RO1 award is sponsored by the National Institutes of Diabetes, Digestive, and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and will characterize 150 patients with either ADPKD, other kidney diseases, or healthy controls. The purpose of this study is to determine markers in urine and blood, which can detect or indicate early stage ADPKD. This study is being conducted at Emory University in Atlanta, GA and at University of California in Davis, CA. This study will utilize metabolomics to tackle the problem of diagnosis of ADPKD. This study will be the first described use of metabolomics in cystic kidney disease, and one of the first to exploit this technology in any renal disease.