A multitude of models

According to CrownBio’s website, their Renal Disease Research Platform provides a range of human disease-relevant rodent and non-human primate models, including kidney disorders such as polycystic kidney disease (PKD) and models of induced kidney diseases.

CrownBio also provides unique diabetic nephropathy models that develop kidney disease as part of diabetes complications, a situation reminiscent of the kidney complications arising in diabetic humans, and a major cause of renal failure in type 2 diabetes patients. CrownBio’s models are said by Crown to be “unparalleled” in their translatability and enable clinically translatable evaluation of therapeutics that target not only kidney complications, but also hyperglycemia in diabetic patients. This makes these platforms unique, the company says, in their ability to solve multiple aspects of the complexities of metabolic disease.

“CrownBio’s unique end-to-end preclinical support of renal disease research enables us to become a strong strategic partner for pharmaceutical companies. Presently there is no cure for PKD and there is a dire need for preclinical models that can enable better clinical translation of drug discovery efforts,” commented Dr. Jim Wang, senior vice president of cardiovascular and metabolic disease research at CrownBio.

“PKD is currently incurable, and diabetic nephropathy is the leading cause of dialysis and kidney transplant in developed countries; therefore appropriate preclinical models are needed for both conditions, as well as for the wide range of other kidney diseases, to both develop and improve treatments,” CrownBio’s website states.

CrownBio provides conventional models that spontaneously develop PKD and closely correlate with human disease, making them an strong choice for efficacy testing and comparison to existing historical data.

The company notes on its website that “CrownBio provides renal disease models of PKD in the genetically relevant jck and pcy mouse, and the PCK rat; uni-nephrectomy, aldosterone-induced renal disease; and type 2 diabetic nephropathy in the human disease translatable ZDSD rat. Each model has a range of validated endpoints to meet research needs, including body weight; Plasma BUN, ALT, AST, bilirubin and creatinine measurement; urinary albumin measurement; and kidney weights and histology for fibrosis or cyst volume determination.”

“The pcy and jck mice, and the PCK rat develop renal disease associated with the genes that cause human disease, providing translatable rodent models which closely mirror human PKD development,” the website continues. “The ZDSD rat is an inbred polygenic model for metabolic syndrome, obesity, diabetes and diabetic complications. Unlike other rodent models of metabolic disease, the ZDSD rat does not rely on monogenic leptin or leptin receptor mutations for development of obesity and type 2 diabetes, which more closely mimics human disease development. This results in a more translatable choice for evaluating your therapeutic agents.”

“This breadth of in-vivo models to support various arms of preclinical renal disease research positions CrownBio as a leader in this field,” said Dr. Charles Van Jackson, general manager and chief scientific officer at PreClinOmics, a Crown Bioscience company.

CrownBio presented this renal disease platform at the November Kidney Week 2016 conference in Chicago.