Doctoral themes 2023

An analytical pipeline to tackle Chronic Kidney Disease & Resistant Hypertension: a guide for patient subtyping & precision medicine

Supervisors

Alexandra Antunes, alexandra.antunes@tecnico.ulisboa.pt

Ana Mestre, asmestre@ciencias.ulisboa.pt

Registration Institution

Instituto Superior Técnico

Project description

Arterial hypertension (HTN) constitutes a leading cause of heart & kidney failure and a major cause of premature death worldwide. Resistant hypertension (RHTN) & Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) constitute major problems for HTN management and major causes of HTN-related morbidity&mortality. This is a relevant national problem, since CKD prevalence is above the worldwide/Europe average and one of the highest incidences of dialysis in Europe. 

RHTN&CKD are multifactorial, therefore patient subtyping would be a highly beneficial prognosis tool, giving clues to etiology causes thereby guiding new and more effective therapy options. 

This multidisciplinary proposal is aimed at the development of an ANALYTICAL platform that combines mass spectrometry and enrichment protocols for profiling a new class of HTN biomarkers.  MACHINE LEARNING ALGORITHMS will be subsequently explored in a PILOT CLINICAL STUDY aimed at the preliminary assessment for the CLINICAL APPLICABILITY of this analytical platform for subtyping CKD&RHTN patients. 

Keywords

Mass spectrometry

Protein adducts

Steroids

Enriching strategies