Cardio-Renal

Novel blood test(s) to manage heart failure and kidney patients

Heart failure is a growing public health epidemic with more than 5 million chronic heart failure patients in the US. As people benefit from improved cardiovascular care they become more prone to develop heart failure later in life . Since heart and kidney are two vascular organs, both are frequently impaired in the same patients where one can be the trigger for the other to deteriorate.

Acute heart failure

Acute heart failure (AHF) represents a large contributor to the health care burden with over 1 million hospitalizations per year in the United States alone. Patients with an AHF event face a substantial risk after hospital discharge with an approximately 30-40% chance of readmission or death within six months. Research efforts are intensifying to identify more effective therapies and management strategies for this syndrome. The latter are centred around the use of cardiac biomarkers.

Using its proprietary MASStermind^® - MASSterclass™ discovery engines, Pronota has identified and is actively investigating novel biomarker candidates showing great promise to improve patient care. One candidate biomarker specifically allows the volume status of a patient to be assessed, and therefore may help the primary care physician identify a risk of an acute event before it occurs.

Chronic and acute kidney disease

Chronic kidney disease (CKD), defined as reduced glomerular filtration, is a common condition with multiple etiologies that affects an estimated 10% of Americans. Early detection of CKD may translate into more favorable outcomes, since renoprotective treatments can be implemented in a timely manner. This implies the need for simple, and specific biomarkers that can monitor the pathophysiologic processes occurring within the kidney. Sensitive biomarkers that allow deterioration to be tracked accurately and in a timely manner may inform the physician about what extra steps need to be taken to preserve kidney function. This is of particular importance in patients with hypertension, diabetes, heart failure or with a recently transplanted kidney.

Kidney filtration biomarkers

The current filtration biomarkers all have their own limitations such as dependencies on muscle mass, BMI, thyroid dysfunction or the use of certain medications. Pronota is evaluating whether its novel proprietary filtration biomarker is largely independent from the traditional interferences and dependencies hampering current clinical standards.

Proteinuria & fibrosis biomarkers

Pronota is currently investigating a proprietary blood biomarker that shows great promise in detecting kidney fibrosis at an early stage and another that may relate to the degree of proteinuria (albumin in the urine) in people with diabetes.

The presence of micro-albuminuria predicts the development of overt diabetes nephropathy, progressive renal failure and is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases. In diabetes patients, the early detection of diabetes nephropathy has been focused on measurements of proteinuria. The occurrence of proteinuria goes hand-in-hand with the development of fibrosis in the kidneys. Early biomarkers predicting proteinuria and early fibrosis may help to select more aggressive therapies in these patients to avoid the development of irreversible kidney fibrosis.