Project: Towards a personalized clinical management of oncologic patients with acute kidney injury (AKI) associated to immune-checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs)
| Acronym | ONAKI-ICI (Reference Number: ERAPERMED2022-200) |
| Duration | 01/04/2023 - 31/03/2026 |
| Project Topic | The immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) have increased survival rates of cancer patients that were previously untreatable by triggering an immune response against tumor cells. However, ICIs action is not selective and it has the potential to suppress the tolerance to self-antigens causing immune-related adverse events (irAEs). Up to 29% of the ICIs treated cancer patients develop acute kidney injury (AKI) secondary to ICIs use (ICI-AKI) and acute tubulointerstitial nephritis (ATIN) is the most frequent associated histological lesion. ICI-AKI is a serious complication as it increases the risk of AKI recurrence after ICIs rechallenge and it may stunt the therapeutic options of the patients as a decreased renal function is an exclusion criterion for many oncologic treatments. The diagnosis of the etiology of ICI-AKI is performed by kidney biopsy which is risky for these fragile population and does not allow a specific diagnosis as it is virtually impossible to distinguish ICIs-ATIN from other AKI etiologies. Therefore, we propose to personalize clinical interventions for ICIs-AKI patients by developing a cost-effective artificial intelligence (AI)-based risk stratification tool to early diagnose ICIs-AKI. To this end, we will collect retrospective and prospective demographic and clinical data of ICI-AKI patients. We will also collect serial urine, blood and kidney tissue (when possible) samples of ICI treated cancer patients during two years to study novel biomarkers related to loss of tolerance of T cells to self-antigens. All of these data will be used to develop an AI-based risk stratification method to early diagnose ICIs-AKI. Further, to ensure viability of the tool implementation we will perform a cost-effectiveness assessment. It is expected that this method will allow to personalize clinical management of ICI-AKI patients and, eventually, avoid kidney biopsy and improve their quality of life. |
| Network | ERA PerMed |
| Call | 5th Joint Transnational Call for Proposals (2022) |
Project partner
| Number | Name | Role | Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fundació Hospital Universitari Vall d'Hebron – Institut de Recerca | Coordinator | Spain |
| 2 | Medical University of Warsaw | Partner | Poland |
| 3 | ASST Fatebenefratelli Sacco | Partner | Italy |
| 4 | Bezmialem Vakif University | Partner | Türkiye |
| 5 | Uppsala University | Partner | Sweden |
| 6 | Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, UPC | Partner | Spain |
| 7 | Hannover Medical University | Partner | Germany |