Kidney Disease

The kidney regulates blood pressure (via osmolality and electrolyte regulation), acid-base homeostasis, blood filtration and waste excretion, vital nutrients and water reabsorption, and its own hormone production. Kidney diseases, or nephropathies, include diverse congenital and acquired diseases all with phenotypes in common related to the dysregulation of these normal kidney functions. Common kidney diseases include, but are not limited to, polycystic kidney diseases (PKDs), cancer, and nephrotoxicity. PKDs represent a large group of well-studied progressive renal disorders characterized by growth and expansion of renal cysts resulting in progressive kidney enlargement and renal insufficiency, often leading to end-stage renal disease. The most common PKDs are inherited as either autosomal dominant or autosomal recessive traits. Recent advances in understanding the role of biological pathways via observed gene expression changes in PKDs and other kidney diseases have led to intriguing possibilities for therapeutic intervention. Although relatively rare, the incidence of kidney cancer is on the rise. The most common type of kidney cancer is renal cell carcinoma, while another type, Wilms' tumor, typically only affects children. Human kidney cancers have been, and continue to be, characterized and classified by well-known recurrent frequent somatic mutations. The crucial role of the kidney in drug excretion also makes it one of the major organs evoking drug-related toxic responses and an important target of toxicological studies. Genes that consistently exhibit altered expression during these toxic responses serve as markers to predict potential adverse clinical outcomes. Various molecular analyses of renal biopsies from affected human patients and rodent model systems will continue to improve the understanding of kidney disease, kidney cancer, and nephrotoxicity pathophysiology.

QIAGEN provides a broad range of assay technologies for kidney disease research that enable analysis of gene expression and regulation, epigenetic modification, and signal transduction pathway activation. Solutions optimized for kidney disease studies include PCR array, miRNA, siRNA, pathway reporter, chromatin IP, DNA methylation, and protein expression products.