Biomarkers and personalized therapy in chronic kidney diseases

Abstract

Numerous clinical trials are currently evaluating new strategies to halt the progression of renal damage in patients with chronic kidney diseases (CKDs). Unfortunately, none of them have considered that the lack of response to new therapies may be due to the pharmacogenetics/pharmacogenomics profile of the patient. The recent impact of high-throughput technologies used in genomics, proteomics and metabolomics may open a new way for discovering biomarkers that can provide us information about the mechanisms on the progression of renal damage. However, they can also be used for diagnosis and for selecting drugs, leading to personalized tailored therapy. The uses of classifiers formed by a list of genes, proteins and metabolites have been introduced into oncology and organ transplantation. These new approaches have recently also been used in the care of human glomerulonephritis. Integrating the large omic data sets with drug and disease databases could give the prediction of drug efficacy and side effects in CKDs. © 2014 Informa UK, Ltd.