A trial to determine if the low-cost oral drug treatment fenofibrate can delay late-stage kidney failure in people living with type 2 diabetes has received more than $5 million in NHMRC funding.
The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) has today announced the allocation of $5,736,695 to Professor Alicia Jenkins, our Diabetes and Vascular Medicine laboratory Head, to fund the important trial.
“Kidney disease is a major cause of illness and death in people with diabetes,” Professor Jenkins said. “People with diabetic kidney disease experience high rates of cardiovascular complications, and progressive kidney injury can result in the need for kidney dialysis or transplantation. It also reduces quality of life enormously, so finding ways to slow down its progression is crucially important.
“Results from other trials around the world with a heart disease focus, suggest that fenofibrate can protect against eye and kidney damage in adults with type 2 diabetes. This needs to be confirmed in trials with a kidney focus, which is what this trial will do.”
The multinational, randomised trial will enrol 1000 patients from across Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Vietnam. Participants will receive a once daily dose of fenofibrate or matching placebo for an average of 3.5 years.
“We will measure if there’s a reduced rate of loss of the participants’ kidney function, including a reduction in protein loss in the urine over about 3.5 years,” Prof Jenkins said. “A key secondary endpoint that we will also measure is total cardiovascular events.
“My many colleagues from Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam and Malaysia are very grateful to the NHMRC for the opportunity to conduct this important research.”
Positive results from the trial, set to begin in February 2024, would likely rapidly change clinical practice and guidelines and reduce the personal and socioeconomic burden of kidney damage.
Prof Jenkins, who joined the Baker Institute in November 2022, applied for the NHMRC funding while she was Director of the Clinical Trials Centre Diabetes research program at the University of Sydney, prior to her appointment at the Baker Institute.
