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Laurel Willig

Laurel Willig

Pediatric nephrologist and Medical Director of the Center for Pediatric Genome Medicine at Children's Mercy Kansas City.

Sep 28, 2026

13:17
But what then is coming down the line for APOL1-mediated kidney disease in terms of targeted treatments?
13:25
Yeah, and that's kind of what I focused my talk on at the ASPN was We've learned a lot, I think, about the potential pathophysiology here.
13:37
And so, you know, whether or not you believe in the kind of second hit inflammatory hypothesis or not, a lot of these things I think are still valid.
13:47
But also, I think with the therapies, again, we might be able to hash out the differences between what I think are going to be subtypes of APOL1-mediated kidney disease and So for instance, historically, when you look, immunosuppression has not been effective or has had limited effect in folks who develop FSGS that is linked to APOL1 disease.
14:17
The kind of classical treatment options generally have less effect in that group of patients comparatively to more of the classic kind of primary FSGS group of patients and nephrotic syndrome patients.
14:35
But, you know, Barsitinib is being studied currently, and that's really a target kind of upstream of APOL1.
14:42
So we know that it is a potent kind of trigger or stimulus for the downstream APOL1 kind of gain of function, kind of toxic feedback loop.

6 MINS LATER

20:34
Okay, moving on about counseling, particularly, how would you advise approaching families, parents, especially when they have a child with genetic diagnosis of APOL1?

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