Kidney biobank launched at Prince of Wales Hospital to boost advancements in treatment, care
Pioneering research has been launched at the Prince of Wales Hospital to combat the fifth most common cause of death in Australia - kidney disease.
Southern Courier
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Pioneering research has been launched at the Prince of Wales Hospital to combat the fifth most common cause of death in Australia - kidney disease.
A team of seven medical experts will develop southeast Sydney’s first kidney biobank with the aim of accelerating new advances in patient treatment, early detection and care.
The biobank will involve the collection of thousands of blood, urine and tissue samples from patients with kidney disease or disorders for future data analysis and testing.
Samples, obtained through consent, will be stored in sub-80 degree Celsius conditions at a special laboratory at the Prince of Wales Hospital.
Professor Zoltan Endre, who is heading the research, said aims of the program included developing new ways of identifying disease to provide patients with better, earlier diagnosis.
Latest research shows there are about 1.7 million people with kidney disease in Australia but about 10 per cent of those are aware they have it.
“Unfortunately kidney disease is a silent killer and the majority of patients don’t show symptoms until (a disease) is very advanced,” Prof Endre said.
“The biobank will help us to build up a large resource of patients that we understand and look at how they progressed to treatment.
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“The need is going to be much greater as time progresses and we need to be able to identify patients earlier and improve risk assessments. It’s about parking the ambulance at the top of the cliff, rather than the bottom.”
The biobank is believed to be the first of its kind in Sydney, and is similar to research underway in the UK and other European countries.
It is hoped the first analysis will be conducted within three years.
The biobank will also include developing ways of predicting the progression of chronic kidney disease and transplant outcomes using biomarkers.
And it will identify improvements for graft survival and measurements of renal reserve in kidney donors to predict transplant outcomes.
The hospital currently carries out more than 1200 dialysis and kidney care procedures each month and is the centre for transplant services in Sydney’s southeast and the Illawarra.
The biobank is partly funded by the Prince of Wales Hospital Foundation.
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