In collaboration with researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Chinook Therapeutics and other institutions, Evotec contributed to clinical research in the field of immunoglobulin A nephropathy (IgAN). This autoimmune disease is the most common form of glomerulonephritis and is characterized by IgA antibody deposition and inflammation in the glomerulus of the kidney. Notably, the disease does not originate in the kidney but in the intestine, and mucosal inflammation is central to the pathophysiology of IgAN. In this study, our collaborators identified abnormal frequencies of circulating populations of unconventional mucosal-associated T cells that may reflect mucosal processes leading to altered IgA production in patients. Evotec leveraged our comprehensive molecular patient database (E.MPD) and transcriptomics expertise to validate these findings in an independent patient cohort. Here, we used blood RNA-Seq data from > 300 patients from the NURTuRE cohort to further validate the significant alteration of unconventional mucosal-associated T cell populations observed by our partners.

_Affiliations

_{1 Renal Division, Department of Medicine, Translational Transplant Research Center, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, USA}

_{2 UO Nefrologia, Dipartimento di Medicina e Chirurgia, Università di Parma, Parma, Italy}

_{3 Department of Nephrology and Medical Intensive Care, Charité - Universitätsmedizin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany}

_{4 Evotec International GmbH, Göttingen, Germany}

_{5 Chinook Therapeutics, Seattle, Washington, USA}

_{6 Human Immune Monitoring Center, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, USA}

_{7 Servicio de Nefrología, Unidad de Hemodiálisis, Hospital de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain}