{"id":224966,"date":"2025-11-12T13:06:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T19:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/experimental-drug-protects-mitochondria-and-prevents-kidney-injury-in-mice"},"modified":"2025-11-12T13:06:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T19:06:08","slug":"experimental-drug-protects-mitochondria-and-prevents-kidney-injury-in-mice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/experimental-drug-protects-mitochondria-and-prevents-kidney-injury-in-mice","title":{"rendered":"Experimental drug protects mitochondria and prevents kidney injury in mice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/experimental-drug-protects-mitochondria-and-prevents-kidney-injury-in-mice.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Serious damage to short-term kidney function\u2014known as acute kidney injury, or AKI\u2014can be fatal and also increase the risk of irreversible chronic kidney disease. It can be triggered by stressors ranging from sepsis to heart surgery, and it affects more than half of ICU patients. There are currently no drugs to treat AKI.<\/p>\n<p>Now, researchers at University of Utah Health (U of U Health) have found that AKI is triggered by fatty molecules called ceramides, which cause serious injury by damaging kidney mitochondria. Using a backup drug candidate that changes <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/ceramide\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">ceramide<\/a> metabolism, the team was able to preserve mitochondrial integrity and prevent kidney injury in <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/mice\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">mice<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe completely reversed the pathology of <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/acute+kidney+injury\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">acute kidney injury<\/a> by inactivating ceramides,\u201d says Scott Summers, Ph.D., distinguished professor and Chair of the Department of Nutrition and Integrative Physiology in the University of Utah College of Health and senior author on a paper describing the results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Serious damage to short-term kidney function\u2014known as acute kidney injury, or AKI\u2014can be fatal and also increase the risk of irreversible chronic kidney disease. It can be triggered by stressors ranging from sepsis to heart surgery, and it affects more than half of ICU patients. There are currently no drugs to treat AKI. Now, researchers [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1495],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}