In this episode, we talk with Dr. Felicitas Hengel, MD and Dr. Nicola Tomas, MD (both at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf) about their groundbreaking anti-nephrin autoantibody research that was just presented at the 2024 ERA Congress and published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Is this a game-changer for minimal change? How could this new understanding change diagnosis and treatment in the future? Are anti-nephrin autoantibodies the next PLA2R? What are the next steps for follow-up studies? And how do you do a big international study like this, anyway? 

References:

The study: 

Hengel FE, Dehde S, Lassé M, Zahner G, Seifert L, Schnarre A, Kretz O, Demir F, Pinnschmidt HO, Grahammer F, Lucas R, Mehner LM, Zimmermann T, Billing AM, Oh J, Mitrotti A, Pontrelli P, Debiec H, Dossier C, Colucci M, Emma F, Smoyer WE, Weins A, Schaefer F, Alachkar N, Diemert A, Hogan J, Hoxha E, Wiech T, Rinschen MM, Ronco P, Vivarelli M, Gesualdo L, Tomas NM, Huber TB; International Society of Glomerular Disease. Autoantibodies Targeting Nephrin in Podocytopathies. N Engl J Med. 2024 May 25. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa2314471. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 38804512.

More information on the research, including additional Q&A with the authors: https://www.is-gd.org/anti-nephrin-autoantibodies 

 Previous research by Astrid Weins:

Watts AJB, Keller KH, Lerner G, Rosales I, Collins AB, Sekulic M, Waikar SS, Chandraker A, Riella LV, Alexander MP, Troost JP, Chen J, Fermin D, Yee JL, Sampson MG, Beck LH Jr, Henderson JM, Greka A, Rennke HG, Weins A. Discovery of Autoantibodies Targeting Nephrin in Minimal Change Disease Supports a Novel Autoimmune Etiology. J Am Soc Nephrol. 2022 Jan;33(1):238-252. doi: 10.1681/ASN.2021060794. Epub 2021 Nov 3. PMID: 34732507; PMCID: PMC8763186.