Christos Chatziantoniou at Inserm UMR 1155 Wins GSK’s Discovery Fast Track Challenge to Investigate Chronic Kidney Disease

Paris, France – 1 December, 2014 – Christos Chatziantoniou, Director of Research at the Inserm UMR 1155, has been selected as a winner of GSK’s 2014 Discovery Fast Track Challenge, which is designed to encourage the translation of academic research into novel therapies. Dr. Chatziantoniou will work with scientists in GSK’s Discovery Partnerships with Academia (DPAc) and the Molecular Discovery Research teams to test their hypotheses and screen targets against GSK’s compound collection. Active compounds could then form the basis of full drug discovery programmes that may ultimately lead to innovative medicines for Chronic Kidney Disease.

Dr. Chatziantoniou, researcher in Inserm, is one of 14 winning proposals, chosen from 428 entries from 234 universities and academic institutes from across 26 countries. Research between Inserm and GSK will focus on identifying and validating novel treatments for therapy of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), a pathology affecting millions of people over the world. CKD is defined as the progressive loss of renal function and is associated with the development of inflammatory and fibrotic lesions within the kidney. Diabetes, hypertension and ageing are the major causes of CKD, and the only treatment today against the terminal phase of renal disease is dialysis or kidney transplantation, making thus this pathology one of the most expensive diseases to treat on a per patient basis.

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