ARTICLE | Translation in Brief
AIMing high
AIM could help clear debris, and fibrotic mediators, in acute kidney injury
February 25, 2016 8:00 AM UTC
Clearing necrotic debris is a critical step in overcoming acute kidney injury (AKI), but failing to turn off the phagocyte response can lead to renal fibrosis in the long term. A Japanese group has shown the circulating protein CD5 molecule-like (AIM; CD5L) promotes clearance of the debris while limiting fibrosis, and plans to use the findings to make therapeutics and biomarkers for the disease.
In a report in Nature Medicine last month, Toru Miyazaki and colleagues showed that endogenous AIM expression is required for recovery in an ischemia-based mouse model of AKI, and treatment with exogenous AIM enabled survival in a version of the model with more severe AKI (see Distillery, page 12). ...