BIOMARGIN – Increasing the life span of grafted kidneys

The BIOMARGIN research project, coordinated by INSERM, has just received financing from European Commission to the tune of 6 million euros for a four-year period. The aim of the project is to develop more effective, non-invasive methods to prevent and diagnose lesions in transplanted kidneys so as to improve treatment and the long-term survival of the graft.
The BIOMARGIN (BIOMArkers of Renal Graft INjuries in kidney allograft recipients) research project, coordinated by INSERM, has just received financing from the “health” seventh framework programme of the European Commission to the tune of 6 million euros for a four-year period. The aim of the project is to develop more effective, non-invasive methods to prevent and diagnose lesions in transplanted kidneys so as to improve treatment and the long-term survival of the graft. Thirteen European research teams located in France (Inserm, AP-HP, CEA, CNRS, Université Paris Descartes, CHU de Limoges), Belgium, Germany and Sweden will work together on a so-called “omics” innovative approach involving the simultaneous study of a large number of genes, proteins and metabolites in order to identify biomarkers for these lesions on a large scale.

Patients who have received kidney transplants in the past twenty years have benefited from a significant decrease in the number of acute rejections in the first months of the transplant but graft survival beyond ten years has only improved slightly. Biopsy of the transplanted kidney remains the examination of reference for the detection of lesions in an allograft. However, this is an invasive technique whose interpretation is often difficult. “It is thus necessary to develop reliable, non-invasive methods to diagnose allograft lesions in order to improve treatment and thus extend the long-term survival of the allograft”, explains Prof. Pierre Marquet, Co-ordinator of the BIOMARGIN European project and Director of the UMR 850 Inserm / Université de Limoges / CHU de Limoges entitled “Pharmacology of immuno-suppressants and transplantation”. This project will also make it possible to analyse the patho-physiological, immune and non-immune mechanisms involved in the long-term graft survival, at a European level.

In order to set-up these non-invasive diagnostic tools, the BIOMARGIN European project researchers chose an integrated and systematic research approach combining all the currently available “omics” technologies (identification of the expression of nucleic acids, peptides, proteins, lipids, metabolites, etc.) with analysis of blood and urine samples, as well as of graft biopsies for comparison purposes and to enable understanding of the lesion mechanisms.

More details can be found at the following link: https://cordis.europa.eu/wire/index.cfm?fuseaction=article.Detail&rcn=36131