New Therapies, Innovations Headline ASN Kidney Week
January 08, 2026
9 min read
key takeaways:
Table of Contents
- Disease remission is now achievable, and cure might be on the horizon, according to a speaker at ASN Kidney Week.
- Data on new therapies for iga nephropathy, fish oil for risk reduction and more were presented.
ASN Kidney Week, held in november, featured leading-edge science in kidney care, with evidence supporting new drugs to treat immunoglobulin A nephropathy, address chronic kidney disease in specific populations and reduce comorbidity risks as well as innovations in dialysis.
“yes, we can … cure kidney diseases” was the title of the state-of-the-art lecture for the opening plenary session. During his presentation, vlado Perkovic, MB, PS, PhD, scientia professor and provost at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, traced the goals of kidney care from slowing disease progression in the 1990s to today achieving remission or even reversal, with a greater understanding of the mechanism underlying kidney disease.
“We have made huge progress in preventing kidney failure with a large number of highly effective treatments now available and more in the pipeline. Our tools are now incredibly powerful,” Perkovic told Healio.
“We can now achieve remission for many patients, where they lose similar amounts of kidney function each year to the general population. To me, cure implies that no further treatment is required, and we are not there yet, but for the first time, realistic pathways to cure are possibly apparent, for example, using gene-based therapies,” he said.
This Healio Exclusive highlights a roundup of key trials and updates from this year’s meeting along with expert outlook and reaction.
“Kidney Week was a blast this year,” Crystal A. Gadegbeku,MD,FASN, chair of the department of kidney medicine in the Medical Specialties Institute in the Cleveland clinic Health System,told Healio. “I think we’ve finally gotten past the ‘pinch me, am I dreaming’ stage of the excitement of new therapies and innovation in our field with this meeting.”
ORIGIN 3
The novel drug atacicept (Vera Therapeutics) was associated with significant reductions in proteinuria vs. placebo with comparable safety and no evidence of immunosuppression for patients with immunoglobulin A nephropathy (IgAN), according to data from a 36-week prespecified interim analysis of the ORIGIN 3 trial.
Richard Lafayette
“[This] is exciting times, and the atacicept data adds beautifully to the building momentum of being able to offer highly effective care for IgAN,” Richard Lafayette, MD, FACP, professor of medicine in nephrology and director of the Stanford Glomerular Disease Center at Stanford University Medical Center, told Healio.
Atacicept is a human transmembrane activator and calcium-modulator and cyclophilin ligand interactor-Fc fusion protein that inhibits B-cell activating factor (BAFF) and a proliferation-inducing ligand (APRIL).
ORIGIN 3 is a 2-year multinational,randomized,double-blind,placebo-controlled clinical trial evaluating the efficacy and safety of atacicept for patients with IgAN. In the interim efficacy analysis, 106 adults with IgAN on biopsy and high risk for disease progression were randomly assigned to a 150 mg weekly atacicept injection and 97 patients were assigned to placebo. Injections were self-administered at home. The safety analysis included 214 patients in the atacicept group.
At week 36,the atacicept group saw a significant 45.7% reduction from baseline in urine protein-to-creatinine ratio vs.6.8% for the placebo group (geometric mean between-group difference in reduction = 41.8%; 95% CI, 28.9%-52.3%). In addition,the atacicept group had significant reductions from baseline vs. placebo in galactose-deficient IgA1 (68.3% vs.2.9%; geometric mean between-group difference in reduction = 67.4%; 95%
been]demonstrated to reduce the risk of kidney failure in type 2 diabetes and CKD, and subsequent analyses from the FIDELITY program showed that 87% of this protective effect is explained by the reduction in albuminuria,” Heerspink said. “Given the strong and consistent associations between treatment effects on albuminuria and treatment effects on kidney failure, I believe that albuminuria is a validated surrogate outcome. It should be used in particular in settings where large outcome trials are difficult to conduct, such as in type 1 diabetes and CKD.”
In FINE-ONE, the finerenone group saw a 34% reduction from baseline in UACR vs. 12% for the placebo group (least-squares geometric mean ratio = 0.75; 95% CI, 0.65-0.87).
Incidences of treatment-emergent adverse events and serious treatment-emergent adverse events were similar with finerenone and placebo. Finerenone was associated with a “small” increase in serum potassium compared with placebo – a maximum difference of 0.14 mmol/L, according to Heerspink.
Use of finerenone has been associated with a reversable early decline in eGFR, which was observed in FINE-ONE.
“What is really engaging is that after 30 years we have a new treatment in type 1 diabetes in the FINE-ONE study, which uses finerenone to reduce proteinuria, and you can do it safely in a type 1 diabetic population,” Gadegbeku, who was not involved with the study, told Healio.”We’re really in an era of innovation.”
Read Healio’s full coverage of this trial.
PISCES
Fish oil supplementation showed efficacy in reducing risks for CV events for patients on dialysis, according to data from the PISCES trial.
Use of omega-3 supplements, a type of polyunsaturated fatty acids that includes eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), has been explored for potential CV health benefits, according to Charmaine E. Lok, MD, MSc, FRCPC, professor of medicine at the University of Toronto and senior scientist at the Toronto general Hospital Research Institute. However, supplementation in a patient population on hemodialysis has not been established, despite patients on dialysis having a 20 times greater risk for CV death, according to Lok.
Charmaine E. Lok
“There really is no suggestion in terms of should you take fish oil supplementation or not, particularly in capsule form,” Lok said during a press briefing.
Lok and colleagues randomly assigned adults on hemodialysis into two groups: 610 received 4 g steam-deodorized, citrus-flavored omega-3 fatty acids, and 618 received citrus-flav
A recent study explored whether a more conservative approach to dialysis for patients with acute kidney injury could improve kidney function recovery. Researchers divided patients into two groups: one received traditional dialysis, while the other initiated dialysis only when specific criteria were met – high urea nitrogen levels, hyperkalemia, or low blood pH. The conservative dialysis group aimed for fluid removal of 0.5 L per day with diuretics or 1 L per day without. The other group initiated dialysis only if certain criteria were met: serum urea nitrogen level greater then 112 mg/dL, hyperkalemia above 6 mmol/L or arterial blood gas pH less than 7.15.
Kidney function recovery after hospital discharge, defined as 14 consecutive days without dialysis, served as the primary endpoint. Secondary endpoints included the number of dialysis sessions per week and the number of dialysis-free days up to 28 days.
Results showed more patients in the conservative dialysis group (64.2%) recovered kidney function compared with the traditional dialysis group (50.5%) at discharge, but the association was not statistically significant in the model adjusted for eGFR and demographic differences. Patients on conservative dialysis underwent fewer sessions than the traditional dialysis group (median, 1.8 vs. 3.1), had a faster time to kidney function recovery (2 days vs. 8.5 days), had more consecutive dialysis-free days (21 days vs. 5 days) and had fewer hypotension events (69 vs. 97).
“We hope that this would really nudge doctors to think about not just putting people on dialysis three times a week, but to really carefully consider the need for dialysis each time,” Hsu told healio. “Some physicians may consider it more hazardous or time-consuming, but we think it’s a relatively safe thing to do with proper monitoring.”
Read Healio’s full coverage of this trial.
for more information:
Hiddo J. L. Heerspink, PhD, can be reached at h.j.lambers.heerspink@umcg.nl.
Chi-yuan Hsu, MD, MSc, can be reached at nephrology@healio.com.
Richard Lafayette, MD, FACP, can be reached at czar@stanford.edu.
Charmaine E. Lok, MD, MSc, FRCPC, can be reached at nephrology@healio.com.
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