DKDM: Diabetic Kidney Disease Map

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) affects around 9% of the global population and is the 12th leading cause of death (GBD Chronic Kidney Disease Collaboration 2020). Diabetic kidney disease (DKD) is the most common form of CKD, responsible for nearly half of all end-stage renal disease (ESRD) cases (Samsu 2021). Despite its high burden, progress in developing effective therapies has been slow, largely due to limited understanding of the underlying molecular mechanisms.

DKD is driven by complex and interconnected pathways that cannot be fully explained by classical reductionist approaches. Systems biology offers a holistic, predictive, and quantitative framework to study these mechanisms and discover new therapeutic strategies.

This project is an international collaboration between the Regenerative Medicine Research Centre of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, the University of Luxembourg (Disease Map Consortium), and the Natarajan Laboratory at City of Hope, Duarte, CA. Our team curates DKD interaction map from the literature and high-quality omics data to reduce publication bias. Then, validates them with expert review. The pathway and enrichment results at cell-type resolusion, biochemical network, parametric ODEs, and druggability score and drug-target prediction of DKD-related genes were uploaded here.

The result is a multi-level, modular map of DKD that connects molecular interactions and signaling pathways in cell-type resolusion and will also serve as a foundation for computational modeling and drug target prediction experimental studies (Borhani et al. 2022; Borzou et al. 2022; Abedi et al. 2021).

• The entry page of the map is at https://disease-maps.io/diabetickidneydisease.

• The map can be browsed here https://dkdm.elixir-luxembourg.org/minerva/.