UNC REX is investing in an experimental treatment to prevent kidney damage in patients
REX Health Ventures, the investment arm of UNC REX Healthcare in Raleigh, is leading a $4.5 million investment into a company searching for an experimental treatment of acute kidney injury, a serious issue affecting hospitalized patients that appears to be increasing across the globe.
The investment is going to Rediscovery Life Sciences (RLS), a Raleigh-based biotechnology company that specializes in finding new uses for older drugs.
In this case, RLS is studying whether suramin, a nearly 100-year-old drug used to treat African sleeping sickness, can be repurposed to treat acute kidney injury, which can devastate patients and lead to kidney failure or reliance on dialysis treatments.
“Unfortunately, (acute kidney injury) is not an uncommon event,” RLS Chief Executive Officer Rich Shea said in an interview. “It often occurs secondary, like after heart bypass surgery ... but the kidney can stop functioning and it is unable to filter out the impurities.”
According to a 2016 article in the Clinical Biochemist Reviews, acute kidney injury occurs in an estimated 15% of hospitalized patients, though the prevalence is even higher (up to 60%) in critically-ill patients. The syndrome’s outcomes can range from longer hospital stays to death if it results in kidney failure.
RLS’s treatment is built off research started at the Medical University of South Carolina that showed in cell and animal trials that suramin could help with kidney injury. In the university’s experiments, it found the drug stimulated regeneration of damaged cells — even after acute kidney injury was induced.
Since the drug, which is approved outside of the U.S. as a tropical disease treatment, had already been shown to be safe in humans with sleeping sickness, advancing it to later clinical trials could be theoretically easier, Shea said.
A personal issue
It is also an issue that Shea has personal experience with. His father-in-law died from complications to acute kidney injury. “I have seen it up close, and it happens fast,” he said. “In some cases the only treatment is dialysis.”
Anita Watkins, director of REX Ventures, said the hospital system was interested in the experimental treatment because of its firsthand experience with acute kidney injury.
She said Rex Ventures invests with two things in mind: It has to be, one, an attractive investment opportunity, and two, a potential benefit for the hospital’s operations.
“That can mean a lot of things,” Watkins said over the phone, “better care for patients, better outcomes or a technology that can make running a complex health system more efficient. We have to have a champion within the health system that is excited about what they are doing.”
She consulted with the hospital’s renal and ICU doctors to determine the potential benefit of RLS’s experimental treatment.
“They were the ones that helped us evaluate what the needs are for patients, and they gave us very positive feedback,” she said.
Moving to human tests
Talks with RLS had been ongoing well before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, she noted. REX partnered with Orlando Health Ventures, another investment arm for a hospital network, on the investment.
While there have been some positive signs in rodent experiments, the experimental approach still needs to be tested in human clinical trials. RLS hopes to start trials in diuretic resistant patients later this year. Some data from those studies should be released in the middle of next year.
“Animal data doesn’t always translate to human results,” Shea said. “There is great hope and optimism, but we have to run the study.”
This story was produced with financial support from a coalition of partners led by Innovate Raleigh as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. Learn more; go to bit.ly/newsinnovate
