Objective
>850 million people are affected by kidney disease, which is caused by kidney injury. Following injury, kidney cells have a remarkable ability to adapt. Previous studies have largely focused on kidney injury signatures, yet treatments successfully targeting injury in animals have failed in humans. Studies focused not on injury but on adaptation are lacking. The main reason for this is that studying kidney adaptation with existing methods is challenging due to the low signal-to-noise ratio of adaptation in the presence of injury.
Instead of studying adaptation in kidney injury patients, SINGuLAR will therefore study isolated adaptation in living kidney donors: Donors, who irreversibly lose 50% of their kidney mass and function, show astonishing compensatory growth and functional adaptation. Studying the remaining kidney after contralateral organ loss allows to leverage an unbiased system free from injury-related noise.
Since tissue biopsies from remaining kidneys that adapt well put living donors at disproportionately high risk, SINGuLAR will use renal cells shed into urine to create the first prospective single-cell transcriptomic map of kidney adaptation (Aim1). Additionally, we will investigate whether remaining kidney adaptation is epigenetically wired (Aim2) and how this process is spatiotemporally patterned (Aim3). SINGuLAR will also assess whether multi-omic data from remaining kidneys in donors correlate with outcomes of donated partner organs in recipients (Aim4), and it will leverage urine-derived tubuloids to enable patient-specific drug targeting (Aim5).
By employing the remaining kidney as a one-of-a-kind human model, SINGuLAR aims to obtain unprecedented spatiotemporal insights into the biology of kidney adaptation and compensatory growth, which can subsequently be harnessed to therapeutically enhance organ adaptation in future kidney injury contexts.
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2025-STG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
10117 Berlin
Germany
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