Signals Weekly: $7.25M KidneyX Prize, Alio launches CAVA, FDA updates its AR/VR list, The Y partners with RC360, & more...

Signals Weekly: $7.25M KidneyX Prize, Alio launches CAVA, FDA updates its AR/VR list, The Y partners with RC360, & more...

Welcome back to Signals, where we come together each week to discover and discuss the latest ideas, innovations, and investments shaping the future of [kidney] health. You are reading our weekly recap of headlines, writing, reading, and voices from the community. If you find it valuable, please share it with others. For all our full length articles, analysis, and data-driven storytelling, visit the Kidneyverse .?


It's a big week for kidney innovation gatherings, with RHA happening in Las Vegas, DHNY in New York, and LSI Emerging Medtech in Lisbon. I'm excited to see some of you in person as the 2024 Kidney Conference season accelerates into the home stretch. Kidney Week is just 5 short weeks away.

For those of you on the road, shaking hands and collecting business cards, what is it you're hoping to learn or accomplish out there? If one of your company goals is to raise awareness and educate kidney stakeholders about your product, services, or vision for the future, consider applying to become a Signals sponsor . We built this platform to advance kidney innovation, and we can help you build that future.

Keep exploring, and thank you for being here.

Tim

This Week in Signals

  1. Top Headlines
  2. What We’re Writing
  3. What We're Reading
  4. Community Voices
  5. Get Involved


1. Top Headlines

Catch up on the latest news and insights shaping the future of kidney care.

NKF and Healthy.io at ALC this weekend. Credit: Geoffrey Martin

HHS launched the $7.25M KidneyX Sustainability Prize , which aims to find solutions that can reduce water or power consumption during dialysis. Today’s life-sustaining dialysis technology consumes large amounts of water and power, putting patients at risk during resource shortages. In a single year, hemodialysis globally requires BILLIONS of liters of water and kilowatt hours of power. Dialysis further requires a high volume of exceptionally clean water, with up to 70% of water rejected during the filtration and purification process. Congrats KidneyX and good luck to competing teams!

A recent Nature study shows that normothermic ex vivo kidney perfusion (NEVKP) is more effective at preserving organ function compared to the standard method of static cold storage (SCS). In a large animal model, kidneys stored under NEVKP maintained higher mitochondrial function and ATP levels, and when combined with AP39—a mitochondria-targeted hydrogen sulfide donor—further improvements in graft function, reduced oxidative stress, and inflammation were observed. This combination could offer a new therapeutic strategy for long-term kidney preservation in transplant patients.

Addition of AP39 during NEVKP following WI has beneficial effects on renal blood flow and urine output.

Alio just announced a study that aims to expand on the current capabilities of its FDA-cleared SmartPatch. The CAVA study , expected to enroll up to 300 participants, will assess Alio's SmartPatch technology for non-invasive monitoring of critical health metrics from the calf, including hemoglobin, hematocrit, potassium levels, SpO2?level, blood volume and heart rate. This advancement would extend the use of Alio's platform to patients who may not have vascular access sites. Congrats Dave Kuraguntla and team!

The National Kidney Foundation and Healthy.io are teaming up at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's Annual Legislative Conference (ALC), which wraps up today in Washington, DC. The ALC is the leading policy conference on issues impacting African Americans and the global Black community. NKF and Healthy.io aim to promote awareness, screening and early detection for kidney disease to eliminate barriers and disparities facing marginalized communities. Well done teams, can't wait to hear how it went!

The The Y (YMCA) of Coastal Georgia just partnered with Renal Care 360o to expand its chronic disease prevention initiatives. As part of this partnership, the Habersham YMCA will be the first location to pilot the program, providing members with access to a connected care advocate who will offer personalized prevention strategies, lifestyle coaching, and, for those at higher risk, referrals to medical professionals. The initiative will also introduce three primary health screenings at this branch, setting the stage for future expansion. Congrats Joseph Cashia, Molly Braun and team!

Nephrolytics has raised the majority of its seed round to kick off MVP development and launch. In her recent post , CEO Tina Gill shared the good news and thanked a list of advisors and supporters who have helped the company get to this stage. I'm looking forward to seeing the demo firsthand - thanks for the offer, Tina!

The FDA updated its list of 69 cleared medical devices that utilize augmented or virtual reality (AR/VR). Radiology and orthopedics account for more than 75% of all products. AR/VR can deliver some types of clinical services, including some normally delivered only in clinics and hospitals, to patients in their homes or other non-clinical settings. I shared a few thoughts on how this relates to kidney care, et al.


2. What We're Writing

Explore our latest deep dives, analyses, and expert commentary on the biggest topics in kidney care.

AVAILABLE NOW

Why Lux Capital is Betting Big on CRISPR and the Future of Organ Transplants . In our latest Signals Brief, we dive into what this news means for kidney care, its potential for shaping new treatment models, and why this moment feels like a turning point for an industry that’s long overdue for new realities.

A generation of Americans has known only one reality: dialysis as the de facto treatment for over 97% of new kidney failure patients. What if it didn’t have to be that way?

A Hero’s Journey: How Balboa Nephrology Cultivates Patient-Centered Teams, with Kiku Boyance . This conversation explores the intersection of team building, education, and patient care—showing that when we support and uplift our healthcare workers, we can expect even greater things for the people we serve. "Over 120 of our dedicated staff engaged in learning, storytelling, and deep reflection on what it truly means to be an advocate for our patients."

A Hero’s Journey reminds us that kidney care is not just about treatments or outcomes—it's about people. The commitment of Balboa Nephrology and its partners to cultivate empathy, support, and excellence in patient-centered care is an inspiring model for the future of kidney care.

Elliott Levy on career paths in nephrology, the puzzling nature of kidney diseases, and the elegance of clinical research . This is part one of a new series written alongside Dr. Janis Naeve , a scientist-turned-venture capitalist who has backed companies across the lifecycle in life sciences and kidney disease. If biopharma is your focus area, what questions or topics are on your mind you'd like to see us tackle next?

Nephrology attracted people who loved to solve puzzles, and the elegance of understanding and treating kidney diseases was incredibly satisfying.

The Kidney Transplant System & Paying Donors—The End Kidney Deaths Act. A closer look at the new bipartisan bill introduced to incentivize living kidney donors. We explore how this legislation could reshape the kidney transplant system and address the organ shortage crisis in the U.S.

COMING SOON

We're always working on our next story. Here’s an inside look at what’s in the Signals pipeline over the next few weeks:

Sign up to get all future posts

Q&A with Mahesh Krishnan. We're excited to share our second interview in an ongoing series on lessons in nephrology leadership and innovation. ICYMI, Janis Naeve and I sat down with Elliott Levy to learn more about his career path from nephrology and clinical research to drug development.

Value-Based Kidney Care Discussion: Coming this week! Months in the making, we couldn't be more ready to share this with you. Tune in for the first in a series of discussions on complex, nuanced topics requiring deep clinical and operational expertise (and differing points of view).

What are the essential medications for kidney disease? We're working on a new spreadsheet + visual to help us keep track of the wide-ranging kidney drug landscape (CKD, ESKD, orphan drugs), including companies, products, indications, approvals, sources, sales and market caps. The list is long, so I want to make sure we get it right. We're talking ACEs, ARBs, CCBs, SGLT2s, GLP-1s, ?-blockers, EPOs, and DOACs to name a few. What's on your short list?

Kidney care convenes at LSI Europe, the epicenter of medtech. I'll be spending some quality time with a few of my peers attending the annual meeting of medical device and biotech innovators, investors, and strategics taking place September 16-20 in Sintra. Stay tuned for recaps and the latest insights from a host of companies building the future of kidney care.

Sign up for Signals (it's free) to make sure you get these stories in your inbox when they go out. Have other thoughts or topic ideas? Let us know what else should be on our radars!


3. What We're Reading

Articles, reports, and insights from around the web that are worth your time this week.

The Miseducation of America’s Nurse Practitioners. A provocative recent Bloomberg article highlights how NPs don’t merely support doctors—but increasingly treat patients independently, including in specialty practices and emergency rooms. And when they aren’t well trained, the results can be tragic. The article argues that because the 600+ NP training programs (~3xs the number of medical schools) lack standardized curriculums (many are purely online) and offer limited clinical exposure, many graduates are inadequately prepared to practice on their own.

Extreme heat due to climate crisis puts people at greater risk of kidney disease. A recent article in the Guardian shows researchers are finding heat-related illnesses can also contribute to heart disease and cognitive impairment. Though workers in several sectors are vulnerable to extreme heat, researchers said farmworkers – many immigrants with few labor protections – face specific risk-factors, such as payment systems that disincentivize water breaks.

How many Medicare patients are on Remote Patient Monitoring? From Yubin Park's recent post : "In case you didn't know, [CMS] publishes a Part B HCPCS-level summary file every September. Since it's September, he just loaded the latest data, which is from 2022. One easy way to track the number of RPM patients is to track 99453—the onboarding code. By the end of 2022, approximately 398,899 patients have tried RPM while on Medicare. Considering 35+M Medicare FFS members, 400K members seem weirdly small, barely above 1%.

Credit: Yubin Park

An editorial in the latest issue of Kidney News describes a nephrologist's experiences test-driving an AI-powered scribe in her outpatient clinic. Dr. Katie Westin Kwon shares dis/advantages of using this tool, which include cutting down her prewriting time from 90 minutes for a full day of clinic to just 20 minutes. Thanks for sharing, Dr. K!

Advantages and disadvantages of using the AI scribe.

"I thought I had the flu but it was my kidney failing." BBC recently shared the story of a teenage girl who was diagnosed with end-stage kidney failure wants to raise awareness that the condition can impact children as well as adults. Doctors rushed Lilly, 14, from Yeovil, Somerset, into intensive care and placed her in an induced coma in June, after she had been suffering from flu-like symptoms for three months.

"I want to make sure for children like me, and others that I know on dialysis, that they don't feel so alone."

Semaglutide Reduces MACE, Death in Participants With CVD, Overweight/Obesity, and Impaired Kidney Function. A new subgroup analysis of the SELECT trials shows participants with impaired kidney function treated with semaglutide showed a 31% reduction in major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) and a 33% lower risk of MACE or death from any cause.

"Many people these days talk about the link between kidney function and CVD, and this study supports that improving one also improves the other."

The Great Healthcare Consumer Awakening. In her latest blog post, Halle Tecco explains "Healthcare consumers are becoming more informed, empowered, and economically engaged; and signs are pointing to the fact that this is changing a system that has long treated us as passive recipients of both care and costs."

We're undervaluing the importance of community in digital health. In a recent post for Second Opinion, Chrissy Farr writes , "In 2024, digital health should fully own this trend. Investors might say that these businesses are “niche,” but they’re wrong. Why? It is better to target a smaller population of users that are highly engaged and cost effective to acquire, versus an extremely broad population that doesn’t know or care that you exist. And people identify with their community far more than they identify with their medical condition."


4. Community Voices

Each week, we ask you thought-provoking question about kidney care, innovation, or policy.

WEEKLY POLL

Go to this week's poll .

If it takes $50M to $250M and 5 to 7 years to get new medical devices to market, WHO should fund breakthroughs in kidney innovation?
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STORIES

This section is dedicated to those discussions and others stories from the broader kidney community.

Man receives organ from ex-wife after battle with kidney disease. "Wesley Roy Jr. was working in Louisiana in the summer of 2023 when he started to notice a change with his health. Back pain revealed a deeper issue with his kidneys...'We got the kidney doctor in town, and he ran more tests and looked at the tests, they ran up there and decided that we need to do something rather quickly, because it was at 7% function." Read more.

Bemidji teacher's compassion and connection leads to life-saving kidney donation. "Bemidji teacher MacKenzie Burnham recently donated a kidney through Donor Outreach for Veterans, which indirectly saved local veteran Mike Boyd's life and forged a bond between their families. The connection was initially formed in MacKenzie Burnham's fourth-grade classroom at Gene Dillon Elementary in Bemidji, when she began teaching Mike and Kate Boyd’s son, Cole, back in 2022." Read more.

After wife's kidney transplant and recovery, Chris Baker cards second-round 61 at Simmons Bank Open. "The last two years haven’t been easy for Chris and Kristen Baker, but they’re stronger for it. Kristen Baker underwent a kidney transplant in June 2023, with her mom as the donor, leading to a 12-week recovery period and a permanently altered nutrition regimen (e.g. no more sushi). The Veritex Bank Championship in April was Baker’s final competitive start of 2023, as he took the remainder of the year off to be with his wife as she underwent the transplant and worked back to full strength." Read more .

Pinellas County father of four needs life-saving kidney donation. "Leron Roberts has worked for the City of Largo for nearly 10 years. He is a solid waste driver.In 2019, he discovered his kidneys were failing. He said he has a hereditary kidney disease and carries the trait for sickle cell disease. "My doctor during routine test said, 'oh, something seems to be wrong with your kidneys, let me send you to a kidney doctor,' and that's when they started doing tests and found out I had a genetic disease and he said, he told me, not if my kidney is going to fail, but when they're going to fail." Read more .

Kingsport man searching for kidney donor. James Dick, 77, has been a dentist in the Kingsport, Tennessee area for over 50 years, helping people better their smiles and lives. Now, he’s the one in need of help after being diagnosed with End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) due to kidney failure in February. While he’s still coming to grips with his diagnosis he says he still has a lot to look forward to, like seeing his two grandchildren grow up and graduate high school and spending time with his wife who he has leaned on during this time. Read more .


5. Get Involved

Join the conversation, connect and collaborate with your peers across the Kidneyverse.

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Tim Fitzpatrick

CEO at IKONA - Advancing Kidney Innovation

2 个月

Get your kidney innovation news, analysis, and data-driven storytelling with Signals. We have a lot more coming your way this year. ?? https://trfitzpatrick.com/p/signals-from-kidney-care

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