Resource • Article
Mind-Boggling Displays, Industry Trends, & other Highlights from ASN Kidney Week 2019
A team from Biorasi joined more than 12,000 professionals in Washington, DC last week to attend American Society of Nephrology’s Kidney Week, a packed six days of educational sessions and presentations. We came away with info on the latest kidney disease research and innovations, reconnected with old friends, and made new ones.
Innovations in home dialysis
During the Scientific Exposition, pharmaceutical companies and device manufacturers showcased new technologies and therapies that we hope will improve quality care. For end-stage renal disease, Wayne Bowden, our VP of program development, noticed innovations in vascular access and home dialysis. Meanwhile, pharma and biotech showcased research in genetic-based therapies using editing technologies and other tools.
Exhibitors pulled out all the stops on their displays and presentations. Among the many eye-popping displays, Horizon showed off a giant model kidney with golf-balled sized uric acid crystals to model gout!
Presentations and concurrents that took place throughout ASN Kidney week clued us in to the latest nephrology practices, products and services. As a CRO, we paid attention to “Novel Therapeutics: What’s on the Horizon?” which discussed novel approaches to drug discovery. We also took note of discussions on the CREDENCE and SONAR clinical trials.
Breakthroughs in CKD
Marc Gas, PhD, attended a standing-room-only session that presented data about three phase 3 trials of Roxadustat, a drug designed to treat anemia associated with chronic kidney disease (CKD). Thursday’s presenters discussed how the drug increased hemoglobin levels, and Friday’s session presented efficacy and pooled cardiovascular safety data.
Dr. Gas also noticed a dominant trend of CKD research and development over hemodialysis drugs. ASN Kidney Week included talks about diagnostic exome sequencing in CKD and research into the microbiome, among others.
In addition to educational courses, the Biorasi contingent had a chance to check out thousands of abstracts and posters, attend a high-impact clinical trials session, and attend daily networking events. We also learned even more from those who paid us a visit at our booth.
The future of clinical trials
Nadine Alam, Senior, Program Development, was surprised with the lack of sufficiently experienced CROs in the field. Much of the feedback she got from the sponsors at ASN Kidney Week was that most of their CROs use cookie-cutter approaches in running clinical trials. Most nephrology trials, especially in the CKD space, require out of the box creative approaches and state of the art data analytics.
Additionally, while Nadine has observed an overall trend toward patient-centered care, she discovered many of the patient-centric methodologies are not necessarily being applied in current trials. This hinders the recruitment and compliance efforts that are direly needed to successfully complete most studies, especially in the arena of rare nephropathies. Patient centricity is something Biorasi strongly believes in! Because of this and our efforts in developing efficacious and proven solutions for all the mentioned challenges, we are poised to grow and continue to successfully run these trials in the future.
Are you interested in moving your kidney disease therapy forward? Give us a call.
