The Search for Predictive Biomarkers of Kidney Injury

Acute kidney injury (AKI), the precursor to acute renal failure (ARF) is the rapid loss of the kidney’s ability to remove waste and help balance fluids and electrolytes in your body. This sudden loss of kidney function, which is reversible, can be the result of illness, physical trauma, or nephrotoxic drugs. Numerous studies have identified biomarkers such as neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL), heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) or kidney injury molecule-1 (KIM-1) with varied success as diagnostic or prognostic indicators of various stages of kidney injury, disease progression, or nephrotoxicity. Recently, Dr. Siew and colleagues from the Vanderbilt University Medical Center demonstrated, using Enzo’s NGAL ELISA assay, that urine NGAL was capable of predicting both AKI and the need for acute dialysis in patients independently of other biomarkers. It was, however, incapable of successfully grading the severity of AKI; a feat that Dr. Zager and fellow researchers from the University of Washington were able to achieve by assaying levels of renal cortical LDH and plasma HO-1 with Enzo’s HO-1 ELISA kit. In another report, Dr. Sohotnik and coworkers from the Carmel Medical Center determined that levels of urinary NGAL and KIM-1 correlated nicely with ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) kidney injury and that urinary excretion of these biomarkers were significantly decreased in I/R group treated with Tadalafil, a phosphodiesterase inhibitor and a promising therapy for I/R injury of various organs, including kidney. These studies demonstrate the importance of predictive biomarkers for AKI and how sensitive detection of such enzymes can be used for drug discovery applications.

Enzo Life Sciences provides a variety of products to study the early stages of acute kidney injury or renal failure such as antibodies, recombinant proteins and sensitive ELISA kits, including our newly released KIM-1 (human) ELISA kit. Representative products are summarized below:

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