eprintid: 10168499 rev_number: 12 eprint_status: archive userid: 699 dir: disk0/10/16/84/99 datestamp: 2023-05-25 14:56:31 lastmod: 2023-05-25 14:56:31 status_changed: 2023-05-25 14:56:31 type: thesis metadata_visibility: show sword_depositor: 699 creators_name: Stern, Edward Phineas Stern title: The causes and treatment of kidney disease in scleroderma ispublished: unpub divisions: UCL divisions: B02 divisions: C10 divisions: D17 note: Copyright © The Author 2023. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. abstract: This project examines the pathogenic processes that lead to kidney disease in scleroderma and tests a novel therapy for scleroderma kidney disease in a clinical trial. I describe three programmes of experiment to identify possible pathogenic targets and new treatment strategies in scleroderma kidney disease. The first divides a large cohort of patients according to their immunological and renal phenotypes, uses genome wide association to identify possible risk genes and then interrogates candidate genes further by staining renal disease tissue for the relevant gene products. In the second stream of investigation, I describe a project to develop novel biomarkers of renal disease activity by measuring concentrations of candidate proteins in urine and serum of scleroderma patients and compare the measurements from matched control groups. The final set of investigations is a randomised control clinical trial, testing the safety and efficacy of the highly selective endothelin antagonist zibotentan in renal outcomes for patients with scleroderma-associated chronic kidney disease and scleroderma renal crisis. Outcomes are assessed by traditional clinical measures of renal function as well as deploying novel disease activity biomarkers developed in parallel in my earlier experiments. In a parallel study I assess the pharmacokinetics of zibotentan in patients on haemodialysis. date: 2023-04-28 date_type: published oa_status: green full_text_type: other thesis_class: doctoral_open thesis_award: Ph.D language: eng primo: open primo_central: open_green verified: verified_manual elements_id: 2017054 lyricists_name: Stern, Edward lyricists_id: ESTER48 actors_name: Stern, Edward actors_id: ESTER48 actors_role: owner full_text_status: public pagerange: 1-185 pages: 185 institution: UCL (University College London) department: Division of Medicine thesis_type: Doctoral citation: Stern, Edward Phineas Stern; (2023) The causes and treatment of kidney disease in scleroderma. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London). Green open access document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10168499/2/edward%20stern%20phd%20thesis%20for%20deposit%2017-4-23.pdf