Chandra Mohan, Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Endowed Professor of biomedical engineering, is reporting the first use of the powerful imaging mass cytometry (IMC) to examine the kidneys of patients with lupus (systemic lupus erythematosus), an autoimmune disease that can affect multiple organs and become fatal, and to diagnose lupus nephritis (LN) in those patients.
Currently, the standard for LN diagnosis is a painful renal biopsy and study of the tissues that are taken out to determine disease outcome and treatment response.
"However, there is low inter-pathologist concordance when determining classes and pathology indices which can lead to misclassification of LN, improper disease treatment, and sub-optimal patient outcomes," said Mohan."Renal biopsies also provide a limited amount of tissue, restricting the type and extent of analysis that can be performed on a sample."
There are several major advantages to IMC including its ability to pinpoint locations of tissues for further study. During the IMC research and examination of 21 patients, Mohan found both decreased and increased disease markers that point to renal disease and that a subset of glomeruli, may be enlarged in some LN patients.
"Decreased expression of epithelial markers along with an increased expression of mesenchymal markers, also termed epithelial to mesenchymal plasticity have been reported in kidney biopsies from patients with renal diseases, including LN," said Mohan. "It is very likely that the parietal epithelial cells encircling the glomeruli may be an additional site of EMP in proliferative LN, though this needs to be verified using additional markers. EMP could certainly affect additional cells in LN kidneys, but this needs to be systematically investigated.
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