One in six adults in the United States has chronic kidney disease— the slow, progressive and usually irreversible deterioration of kidney function, and only half of them have been diagnosed.

 

There are almost half a million Americans being treated for end-stage renal disease (ESRD), the final and most severe phase of kidney disease that must be treated with dialysis or transplantation. More than 17,000 kidney transplants are performed each year in the United States. In all, the cost to the U.S. health care system for ESRD treatment alone is more than $32 billion a year.

 

As the epidemic continues to grow, there is an increasing need for simpler, faster and more accurate diagnostic tools to diagnose kidney disease.

 

Kidney disease is currently diagnosed with a serum creatinine test, which may be followed by a kidney biopsy. While there are more than 1 million serum creatinine tests performed each year in the United States, they are time-consuming and do not always accurately indicate the presence of kidney disease. When a patient is found to have abnormally high serum creatinine levels, an invasive and sometimes painful biopsy of the kidney tissue may be required.

The Renovar Approach.
Renovar is pioneering the development of diagnostic tests for kidney disease and transplant monitoring based on our proprietary portfolio of protein biomarkers. These biomarkers are found in urine and offer the prospect of earlier, non-invasive prediction of disease and organ rejection with greater sensitivity and specificity than the current methods.

Renovar, founded in 1999 by a noted University of Wisconsin-Madison transplant surgeon, is commercializing two of these biomarkers as the Renokine™ I Human Urinary Chemokine Assay. It provides full, start-to-finish support for researchers using these and others of the company's proprietary biomarkers.

Renovar — A better solution for a growing epidemic.