MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (11/03/2022) — The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a 5-year, $2.5 million grant to the University of Minnesota to fund the Minnesota Precision Medicine CKD & Resilient Diabetes Recruiting Site: Engagement, Enrollment & Ethics — also known as Minn-KPMP. Minn-KPMP will be a recruitment site for the Kidney Precision Medicine Project (KPMP) — a coalition of leading research teams using precision medicine to understand and find new ways to treat chronic kidney disease (CKD) and acute kidney injury.
“We are thrilled to be part of this NIH-led effort to greatly enhance our understanding of chronic kidney disease related to diabetes and hypertension and contribute to finding new ways of halting it,” said Patrick Nachman, MD, director of the Division of Nephrology and Hypertension at the University of Minnesota Medical School.
Diabetes and hypertension are the main causes of CKD in the United States and many other countries. Minn-KPMP will recruit patients with diabetes and/or hypertension who have CKD, and will also include patients who have long-term diabetes and no CKD. Minn-KPMP will engage a diverse participant population using community-based participatory research methods because underserved and underrepresented populations are disproportionately affected by CKD,
“The overarching goal of the Kidney Precision Medicine Project is to identify the right patient, for the right therapy, at the right time,” said Luiza Caramori, MD, MSc, PhD, adjunct associate professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School and an endocrinologist at the Cleveland Clinic.
The research team will collaborate with a community advisory board of local community members with lived experience with CKD or a loved one with CKD. The board will guide Minn-KPMP on inclusive recruitment and ethical issues including research-directed kidney biopsies, return of results, genetic testing and biobank governance. The research team is engaging community members from the start in order to co-design the recruitment process and how the team will disseminate results — an important next step in CKD research. A national Ethics Advisory Board has also been recruited to collaborate across the KPMP consortium of sites to ensure ethical approaches to recruitment, consent and return of results to participants.
Minn-KPMP is led by Drs. Caramori and Nachman. Jerica Berge, PhD, MPH, LFMT, professor and a vice chair for research at the U of M Medical School, and Susan M. Wolf, JD, professor of law and medicine at the U of M Law School and Medical School and chair of the University’s Consortium on Law and Values, will lead research on community engagement and ethical issues raised by KPMP. Their team will work with a community advisory board and an ethics advisory board to study the ethical implications of KPMP research.
The research team includes faculty from multiple departments across the Medical School, project managers and clinical research coordinators, and two patient representatives.
Funding is provided by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease and the National Institutes of Health —award number 1U01DK133097-01.
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About the University of Minnesota Medical School
The University of Minnesota Medical School is at the forefront of learning and discovery, transforming medical care and educating the next generation of physicians. Our graduates and faculty produce high-impact biomedical research and advance the practice of medicine. We acknowledge that the U of M Medical School, both the Twin Cities campus and Duluth campus, is located on traditional, ancestral and contemporary lands of the Dakota and the Ojibwe, and scores of other Indigenous people, and we affirm our commitment to tribal communities and their sovereignty as we seek to improve and strengthen our relations with tribal nations. For more information about the U of M Medical School, please visit med.umn.edu.
About the Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment & the Life Sciences
Created in 2000, the Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment & the Life Sciences links 21 member centers working across the University of Minnesota on the societal implications of biomedicine and the life sciences. The Consortium engages in groundbreaking work on issues including genetic and genomic research, oversight of nanobiology, bioengineering, cutting-edge neuroscience, and ethical issues raised by the COVID-19 pandemic. Regents Professor Susan M. Wolf, JD, chairs the Consortium; she is an expert in the areas of health law, law and science, and bioethics.