Clinical Science (2017) 131, 225–226 doi: 10.
1042/CS20160624
Chronic kidney disease
Christian Delles* and Raymond Vanholder†
*Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8TA, U.K.
†Nephrology Section, Department of Internal Medicine, Ghent University Hospital, Ghent, Belgium
Key words: chronic kidney disease, cardiovascular disease, fibrosis, translational science
Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is characterized by persist-
ing renal damage and/or loss of renal function. The condition is
associated with high morbidity and mortality throughout the con-
tinuum from early disease to advanced stages that require renal
replacement therapy. Although much progress has been made in
prevention, detection and treatment, CKD remains a major public
health problem. Its global prevalence is estimated at 5–10% and,
primarily because of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, the
global burden of CKD-associated diseases is alarmingly high [1].
The scope of Clinical Science is to translate molecular bios-
cience and experimental research into medical insights. CKD is
a prime example of a disease in need of a truly translational ap-
proach that unravels pathophysiological mechanisms to develop
new diagnostic, preventative and therapeutic strategies for the
benefit of patients at risk of or with overt CKD. The editors have
therefore decided to launch a call for papers on CKD that address
disease mechanisms and their translation into clinical practice.
We are honoured to oversee the editorial handling of submissions
to this series and look forward to seeing some of the best research
in this area of Clinical Science.
We would expect papers in this series to have both a molecular
and a clinical angle, these being tightly connected. Clearly, there
are numerous translational aspects in CKD. The molecular mech-
anisms linking pathogenetic factors with persistent renal damage
are manifold and incompletely understood; improved knowledge
of disease mechanisms will translate to better treatment of pa-
tients with CKD. The immediate sequelae of CKD such as an-
aemia, uraemia and altered calcium and phosphate homoeostasis
are clinically well known although their pathogenesis is still not
entirely clear; the recent recognition of factors such as fibroblast
growth factor-23 (FGF23) as important regulators of phosphate
homoeostasis is a prominent example of novel pathophysiological
insights with potential to impact on management of patients with
CKD [2]. And although the relationship of CKD with cardiovas-
cular diseases is also well known, it remains unclear how exactly
renal diseases increase cardiovascular risk; peculiarities in pa-
tients with CKD such as the lack of a protective effect of statins
in patients with end-stage renal disease [3,4] and specific pat-
terns of myocardial damage not typically seen in patients with
normal renal function [5] are examples of areas that require more
mechanistic work. Such work may include traditional physiolo-
Abbreviations: CKD; chronic kidney disease
Correspondence: Professor Christian Delles (email Christian.Delles@glasgow.ac.uk)

C 2017 The Author(s). Published by Portland Press Limited on behalf of the Biochemical Society.
gical and molecular studies as well as novel unbiased approaches
to pathway discovery such as proteomics, transcriptomics and
metabolomics, and RNA sequencing and whole exome sequen-
cing as new technologies applied to the problem of identifying
the molecular basis for CKD.
Patients with CKD benefit from a multidisciplinary approach.
The high prevalence of CKD exposes all clinical specialities to
patients with impaired renal function where expert nephrological
advice is often required to inform treatment decisions. Likewise,
many forms of CKD are the result of diabetes, hypertension,
autoimmune conditions and infectious diseases where nephro-
logists benefit from the knowledge of experts in other areas of
medicine in order to offer the best possible treatment to their pa-
tients. This multidisciplinarity of CKD is ideally suited to Clinical
Science and something we hope this call for papers will reflect.
Of course, Clinical Science does not want to “compete” with
specialist journals in renal medicine and we would therefore par-
ticularly welcome submissions of translational research papers
and reviews that span from renal to other medical disciplines.
In order to attract the highest quality research, it is import-
ant to outline which papers will not be suitable for the special
series. Clinical Science does generally not publish the results
of clinical trials of investigational products and there will be
no exception to this rule for this series. Similarly, work that is
purely focused on physiology or pathophysiology in experimental
models but without translational clinical potential is unlikely to
be considered. Biomarker studies and genetic association studies
that do not unravel disease mechanisms may also be better placed
in other journals.
We have already opened the series with contributions pub-
lished in recent editions of the journal. We would like to high-
light the review of Cobo et al. [6] on sex and gender differences in
CKD; a study by Coughlan et al. [7] on changes in mitochondrial
dynamics and function in the development of diabetic nephro-
pathy and the review by Holterman et al. [8] on the role the Nox
family of enzymes in the pathogenesis of renal diseases. A paper
by Xu et al. [9] is of particular interest for this series as it describes
the development of CKD from acute kidney injury and how the
transcription cofactor yes-associated protein (YAP) is involved
in regeneration towards normal renal function or progression to
CKD following the acute injury. The journal is very interested in
225
 C. Delles and R. Vanholder
studies into regeneration on the one hand and remodelling and
fibrosis/fibrogenesis on the other hand and the study by Xu et al.
[9] addresses both aspects in a rat model and in human biopsy
samples.
We decided to write this editorial in order to remind the com-
munity of the call for papers that addresses this priority research
area. Having seen the success of these first submissions to the
series, we are excited to receive further excellent submissions in
the field of CKD in the near future.
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Version of Record published 5 January 2017, doi: 10.1042/CS20160624
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