Quantitative Detection of Promoter Hypermethylation as a Biomarker of Acute Kidney Injury During Transplantation

Kidney repair after injury is a recapitulation of normal morphogenesis, with similarities to malignant transformation, and aberrant promoter hypermethylation, also known as epigenetics, is a promising biomarker approach to diagnose malignancies. Therefore, JHU researchers investigated whether methylation-based urinary biomarkers could be useful for the early detection of ischemic-reperfusion injury (IRI). Examination of urine DNA for aberrant promoter hypermethylation pattern in two cancer-related genes using quantitative methylation-specific polymerase chain reaction from deceased and living donor kidney transplant recipients, showed that transplant recipients were significantly more likely to have aberrant hypermethylation of one of these promoters than healthy controls. Description (Set) Proposed Use (Set) The invention describes a novel epigenetic biomarker for the diagnosis of acute ischemic injury in transplantation, which may be particularly useful for detecting early kidney injury and aid with its subsequent management. Most importantly, this biomarker can be detected from noninvasive urine samples.

Inventor(s): Rabb, Hamid

Type of Offer: Licensing



« More Medical Patents

---