The overarching challenge in PKD is how to translate the many advances in basic scientific understanding of the pathophysiology of PKD into the development of effective new drugs. Specific challenges include a shrinking pool of patients available for clinical trials, lack of biomarkers in early disease, lack of widely- available, standardized data models to harmonize diverse data sources, and limited engagement of patients and their families in prioritizing research questions. The goal of the Clinical Research Core is to facilitate research across the translational spectrum from T1 to T4 by PKD investigators nationwide. This will be achieved through the development of multiple tools and resources that will be made freely available to the research community.
The specific aims are: 1) to create a consortium of academic centers across the Central and Western regions to form an ADPKD clinical trial network; 2) to expand and continue to follow a longitudinal cohort of young patients with early ADPKD and control subjects and collect biospecimens for biomarker discovery; 3) create a standardized data collection instrument for PKD studies in RedCAP and software for automated mapping into a standard data format required for registration studies; and 4) use our patient engagement resource to identify patients' priorities for research questions and use this to inform research strategy and directions in the PKD community.
