A simple blood based assay to identify diabetic patients who are likely to develop or have early stage diabetic nephropathy has been developed at King's. This has the potential to be used regularly at diabetic clinics.

Market

30-50% of diabetics are predicted to develop nephropathy.  Diabetes currently affects>170 million people worldwide and is predicted to affect twice this number in the next 30 years. A large increase in microvascular complications such as nephropathy is likely to follow the global epidemic of diabetes.  Diabetic nephropathy is the leading cause of end-stage renal disease, complete kidney failure, necessitating dialysis or transplantation. There are currently approximately 32,000 people in the UK on renal replacement therapy (RRT) and around 10 per cent (~3,200) of these have diabetes.  Every year in the region of 5,500 people begin RRT and sixteen per cent of these people have diabetes. 

 Benefits

The King's assay overcomes two fundamental problems encountered with the currently used dipstick method, the micoralbuminuria test which monitors protein leakage in the urine, to diagnose diabetic nephropathy.

The dipstick method can only identify patients that have already suffered irreversible kidney damage where as the King's assay would identify patients before or at a very early stage of disease onset.

 Diabetic nephropathy takes 10-20 years to develop the King's test could be offered to all diabetics at regular (ie.g 12monthly) intervals to predict and monitor their level of risk. The assay would be used in conjunction with strict glycemic control and drug therapy to monitor a patient's recovery.

Development

The work to date is early stage and the results are being corroborated by carrying out further analysis of a larger population of samples.

Early Stage

Patent protection is being sought.