International Context
The objective of our unit is to combat renal diseases, a major burden of Public Health. The number of persons suffering from renal dysfunction(s) is estimated to reach 1 Bn worldwide in 2025, with a rate of increase around 7-9% per year since 2000. The continuous decline of renal function leads to an end-stage renal disease (ESRD), for which the only available solution today is hemodialysis or transplantation, with a median life expectancy set at 5-7 years. Therefore, the main objective of our unit is to provide a comprehensive approach to the mechanisms responsible for loss of renal function and impaired tissue repair, to provide specific biomarkers for an early detection, and to develop more effective and specific treatments against progressive renal failure in order to halt the increase in the number of people requiring dialysis and/or transplantation.
Research Strategy
Our research strategy is based on the use of advanced state-of-the art methodological approaches such as genetically modified mice, specific targeted drug delivery, and bio-informatics and genetic analyses, to investigate the role of a pre-defined candidate gene, and/or to apply therapy-driven hypotheses to uncover the underlying mechanisms and mediators, and/or to correlate gene mutations to specific renal pathologies.
A common objective to the different projects is the identification of impaired cellular processes, novel markers or gene associations predictive of increased risk of renal disease and to provide the proof of concept for druggable targets in kidney pathologies.
Unit Structure
CoRaKiD is led by Dr Christos Chatziantoniou and, since the 1st of January 2024, Dr Juliette Hadchouel. The projects are distributed among 4 themes, as described in the figure below. Starting in January 2025, we plan to create two teams, which be led by Prof. Emmanuel Letavernier (Team 1) and Dr Christos Chadjichristos. Team 1 will focus on the prevention of the progression towards Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), while Team 2 will focus on the treatment of CKD.
