Abbott to Develop Acute Kidney Failure Test

Abbott Laboratories (Abbott Park, IL, USA) has signed an exclusive agreement with Cincinnati Children's Hospital (Cincinnati, OH, USA) to develop a urine-based diagnostic assay to detect kidney injury and disease.

The test will use the protein biomarker neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL) that has been reported to help physicians rapidly and accurately diagnose acute kidney failure. The current test, which measures serum creatinine, can take up to several days to diagnose kidney failure.

Acute kidney failure is present in 5% of hospital admissions and in up to 30% of patients in intensive care. The cost of treating advanced kidney failure in the intensive care unit is high, and mortality rates of 40-80% have been reported. "Early identification of acute kidney failure is the key to helping physicians manage and treat the condition more effectively,” said Prasad Devarajan, M.D., director of the division and of nephrology and hypertension at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.

A study by Dr. Devarajan and colleagues, which appeared in the April 2005 edition of The Lancet, reported that concentrations of NGAL were strikingly raised in the urine and serum of children with acute kidney failure after undergoing cardiopulmonary bypass surgery. Another study, published in the May 2006 issue of the American Journal of Transplantation, reported that NGAL may be used to predict kidney failure in patients following kidney transplantation.

NGAL is one of several biomarkers that Abbott is using to develop assays for its analyzers. Automated assays to help physicians diagnose patients with preeclampsia and small cell lung cancer are expected to be available during the next few years.



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