Feasibility of mCura1: A kidney-targeted nanomedicine that promotes self-healing of Chronic Kidney Disease with messenger RNA.

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Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is a little-known disease, but does affect 10-13% of the population in Europe and constitutes the 9th cause of death. Hallmark of this disease is loss of kidney function, leading to the progressive loss of the ability to clear metabolic waste and produce kidney-specific hormones. The consequences affect the entire body (heart attacks, anaemia,osteoporosis and cognitive decline) and ultimately become life-threatening. Management of these consequences with currently available drugs or dialysis does not stop, but merely slows the progression. The only alternative is kidney-transplantation, which is a very limited solution due to a donor-shortage and the relatively short survival of the transplant. In addition, these treatments frequently cause severe side-effects, resulting in a problematic decrease in quality of life. The chronic nature of the disease, the high number of patients and the high number of drugs per patient, together place a large (financial) burden on the healthcare system, consuming 4-17% of the European healthcare budgets. In pursuit of the first curative treatment for CKD, Mercurna is developing a kidney-targeted nanomedicine, mCura1. The unique selling point of mCura1 is the combination of the enhanced safety provided by kidney-targeting and the efficacy provided by mRNAbased therapeutics. Mercurna has booked very promising results in pre-clinical studies accumulating in several patent applications. In the NanoMed-CKD project, Mercurna will further develop its business plan to support the (clinical) development path to bring this groundbreaking therapy from lab to clinic to market.