Increasing podocyte OTUD5 activity for diabetic kidney disease

Increasing the activity of the deubiquitinating enzyme OTUD5 could help treat diabetic kidney disease by promoting OTUD5’s deubiquitination of the serine-threonine kinase TAK1, which prevents downstream MAPK activation that drives podocyte inflammation and injury.

Transcriptomic analysis comparing gene expression in a mouse podocyte cell line exposed to high-concentration glucose and palmitic acid to induce a diabetic kidney disease phenotype versus the same cell line exposed to vehicle identified OTUD5 as a gene that was highly down-regulated in podocytes with the disease phenotype. ...