Research Awards Recipients

Lay Summary
Polycystic kidney disease (PKD) is a genetic kidney disorder. It causes fluid-filled cysts to form in the kidneys, thereby changing the shape of the kidney and making them much larger. PKD decreases kidney function and eventually causes kidney failure, requiring dialysis or kidney transplantation. It is the fourth leading cause of kidney failure. Presently, in some forms of the disease, a drug called tolvaptan has been shown to have modest beneficial effects, but it causes a number of very bothersome (frequent urination, increased thirst) and at times dangerous side effects that are difficult to manage.
 
Dr. Karaplis will use as a model of the human condition, a mouse that develops PKD. Using kidney tissue from these mice, he will explore the cause of this rapid growth in cell number and the inability of the kidney to deal with this problem, eventually causing kidney cysts. Finally, he will feed these mice chow containing either tolvaptan or TUDCA, a product that eliminates the undesirable consequences of rapid cell growth with minimal side effects, each alone or in combination, and then determine their effects on kidney size and function. He anticipates that TUDCA will provide a beneficial effect on these measures and offer a novel potential therapeutic alternative to tolvaptan for the treatment of patients with PKD.