The first RoFAR Special Grant awarded to a Canadian scientist
A three-year project focused on the organ-protective effect of EPO will be supported with 800,000 Swiss Francs

In 2006, RoFAR invited investigators to submit applications for special grants for innovative projects holding the promise to transfer study results into clinical practice. RoFAR is very proud to announce that a grant of over 800,000 Swiss Francs was awarded to Dr Nicoletta Eliopoulos of the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research of Montreal, Canada for a three-year project aimed at coupling cell therapy and gene therapy with the protective effect of erythropoietin in recovering kidney function after acute renal failure. Mouse models, which have been designed to possibly translate into clinical experimentation, will be used to perform the studies.

Dr. Eliopoulos graduated from McGill University in Montreal in 1990 with a BSc, and obtained her MSc and PhD degrees at the University of Montreal in 1993 and 1999, respectively. After that she worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Dr Jacques Galipeau at the McGill University-affiliated Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research, where she has been a project director since 2005. Recently she has been investigating the delivery of EPO by genetically engineered cells in the treatment of anaemia of chronic renal disease.

Acute renal failure (ARF) is a common and serious disease with a high mortality rate exceeding 50% that has not decreased in the last 40 years. Various experimental studies in ARF have indicated that bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) can participate in the protection and repair of kidneys through their ability to differentiate into renal tubular and renal endothelial cells, but mainly through their secretion of factors protecting renal cells from death, and/or through their inducing proliferation of surviving tubular cells or differentiation of endogenous renal stem cells. Erythropoietin (EPO), an essential cytokine for erythropoiesis, has also been determined to be a multifunctional cytokine, with its receptor shown to be expressed on a variety of cells that include renal cells. EPO has been found to exert a reparative and protective effect on damaged kidney through an increase in proliferation and decrease in death of renal tubular cells, as well as an accelerated recuperation of kidney function and structure. The goal of our proposed research is to test a novel approach combining cell therapy and gene therapy for ARF, one coupling the kidney reparative/protective effects of MSCs with those of EPO. Therefore, we propose a clinically translatable cell and gene therapy study where MSCs will be genetically engineered to secrete EPO and implanted in two mouse models ARF. One mouse model will be induced by ischaemia and the other by the nephrotoxic drug cisplatin. Animals will be monitored over time, and numerous analyses will be conducted to assess kidney function and structure. The effect will be compared with several control groups, such as ARF mice administered with non-EPO-secreting MSCs or recombinant mouse EPO, alone and combined. We expect that kidney injury will be repaired/protected significantly by our novel, easily clinically-translatable strategy combining the beneficial effects of MSCs with those of EPO for the treatment of ARF.

Please see the relative RoFAR media release for details.