title: Matching Kidneys and Urines: Establishing Noninvasive Surrogates of Intrarenal Events in Primary Glomerulonephritis.
abstract: Kidney biopsy is the gold standard procedure for providing diagnostic and prognostic information for patients with glomerular-based diseases, however, the utility of this procedure for assessing longitudinal disease activity is limited. The intense search for noninvasive biomarkers of kidney disease activity and injury is driven in large part by the inherent risks of the kidney biopsy procedure and limited information derived from the morphologic description of biopsy findings. Furthermore, gaps in our understanding of the core intrarenal molecular processes underlying the development and progression of glomerular-based diseases has limited the development of effective targeted therapy. In this review, we discuss the potential utility of molecular analysis of the urine to provide a dynamic window into intrarenal molecular and morphologic responses. We focus on molecular analysis of the urine to identify noninvasive surrogate markers of kidney responses, with the goal of using these biomarkers as more sensitive indicators of progression and tissue-level responses to therapeutic interventions in patients with primary glomerulonephritis.
authors.affiliation: The Toronto Glomerulonephritis Registry, University Health Network, Gabor Zellerman Chair in Nephrology Research at the University of Toronto Department of Medicine, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Electronic address: heather.reich@uhn.ca.
authors.forename: Heather N
authors.initials: HN
authors.lastname: Reich
authors.affiliation: Informatics and Bio-computing Program, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Veronica Y
authors.initials: VY
authors.lastname: Sabelnykova
authors.affiliation: Informatics and Bio-computing Program, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Department of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Paul C
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: Boutros
mesh_terms: D015415:Biomarkers / Q000032:analysis*; D001706:Biopsy; D018450:Disease Progression; D005921:Glomerulonephritis / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000473:pathology*; D006801:Humans; D007668:Kidney / Q000473:pathology*; D011379:Prognosis
chemical_list: D015415:Biomarkers
keywords: Genomics; Glomerulonephritis; Prognosis; Proteomics; Transcriptomics; Urine