Innovative and comprehensive therapies needed for kidney disease

Biomarkers have become important tools for cancer screening, diagnosis and selection of medication.

As a result biomarker-based immunotherapy and new drug development will become the major research target for kidney cancer and its scientific management, medical experts told the an international medical conference on renal diseases in Shanghai over the weekend.

Launched by the China Medical Education Association's clinical kidney disease commission, top experts from home and broad gathered to discuss the latest improvements in kidney disease prevention and control, new theories and new researches.

Chen Hongzhuan from Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine said immune-checkpoint inhibitors targeting PD-L1, which plays a crucial role in immune evasion by tumor cells, have been proved effective biomarkers for cancer immunotherapy.

"It will boost a reform of medical diagnosis and treatment in the future," Chen said. "Biomarkers will push the development of precise medicine, lifeomics, human genomics and pan-geomics."

In addition to novel and innovative therapy, medical experts also called for a healthy lifestyle-based comprehensive disease management.

Dr Hou Fanfan, director of the nephrology department of Nanfang Hospital, said a classified treatment based on good nutrition, proper sports, smoking-control and weight-control for blood glucose, blood pressure and blood fat control is the key for chronic kidney disease treatment.

There are an estimated 120 million people in China with chronic kidney disease, of whom 90 percent are unaware of their disease. Among them, the majority are people who also suffer from diabetes and hypertension.

"A comprehensive therapy targeting the kidney disease, cardiovascular disease and diabetes must be introduced for the best and biggest clinical benefit for patients with chronic kidney disease," she said.

"Controlling hypertension is the key of the therapy. An individualized treatment concerning the protection of targeted organs like kidney and heart should be reiterated."