The social and financial burden that chronic kidney disease (CKD) imposes on European countries is significant. Currently 16.95% of the global population suffers from CKD. The prevalence of the disease has increased steadily during the previous decades and it is expected to reach alarming rates in the near future. It is thus apparent that an effective treatment for CKD will have a positive social and financial impact. The pathological basis of CKD is complex and the molecular mechanisms responsible for the onset and progression of the disease have not been fully elucidated. Their elucidation will enable the identification of specific therapeutic targets. Currently there are significant molecular datasets available on CKD deposited in databases. However, a marked deficiency of these datasets is the scarcity of kidney tissue proteomics data. PROCEED targets the mapping of kidney tissue proteomics changes in association to CKD phenotypes, integration of molecular datasets with clinical data by systems biology approaches, and subsequently prediction of novel therapeutic targets. In order to obtain a detailed molecular profile of the kidney the two main morphological features, glomeruli and tubules will be isolated and their proteins will be identified. The output of the proposed study is expected to fill a very important gap in the existing knowledge in the field, namely provide the in situ comprehensive proteomics phenotyping of renal disease progression. The project is timely and in accordance with the current European research developments and societal needs.
