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Abstract
Diseases of the kidney represent a major cause of morbidity and
mortality in Europe. The elderly are disproportionately affected,
but renal disease is also a condition that severely affects children.
An estimated 4.5 Million Europeans suffer from renal disorders.
The death rate in patients with renal failure is 20% annually.
This disease burden and its challenge for our societies is the
focus of this proposal.
Elucidation of the human and other genomes heralds a new era
in biomedical research offering unprecedented opportunities
to understand disease processes and to identify strategies
to improve health. We will embrace these opportunities and
implement an interdisciplinary research program, the European
Renal Genome Project (EuReGene) that integrates European excellence
in research relevant to renal development, pathophysiology
and genetics. Our goal is to discover genes responsible for
renal development and disease, their proteins and their actions.
To achieve this goal, we have established a consortium of leading
scientists, clinicians and SME partners that will focus on
the development of novel technologies and discovery tools in
functional genomics and their application to kidney research.
We will rely on comparative genomic studies in many systems
that provide utilitarian models ranging from zebrafish, to
Xenopus, to mice, to rats. Our studies will be performed at
different levels including the gene, the cell, the organ and
the organism.
Ultimately, identification of disease genes will lead to a
better understanding of renal disease processes, to improved
diagnosis and to new concepts in therapy. Our program will
establish a paradigm for an integrated post-genomic approach
to analyze renal disease-related developments that may be transferred
to other organ systems or disease entities in the future.
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