Dr. Brendon Neuen
Pioneering Kidney Disease Research Dr. Brendon Neuen, Director of the Kidney Trials Unit at Royal North Shore Hospital,
This public-private partnership involves more than 12 institutions including Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Oxford and Sydney Universities, and others in Europe, as well as major pharmaceutical companies. While the drug class was known to have cardiovascular benefits, Brendon’s work has definitively shown that the SGLT2 inhibitors reduce kidney disease progression, even in people without diabetes, and that the drug class has particularly prominent benefits in preventing heart failure and sudden cardiac death. “The research allowed us to better understand the effects of SGLT2 inhibitors on a range of important outcomes for different types of patients,” he says. Brendon is proud the work has had a global impact. “It has, in part, helped support the inclusion of SGLT2 inhibitors on the World Health Organisation List of Essential Medicines,” he says. The drug is now available in almost every country for less than a cup of coffee, and widely recommended in almost every major clinical practice guideline for patients with type 2 diabetes, kidney disease or heart failure.
is spearheading clinical trials aimed at discovering new treatments for kidney disease while addressing the dual threats of kidney failure and cardiovascular disease. He collaborates with medical institutes and universities, as well as with the pharmaceutical industry to conduct large international randomised clinical trials. Trained as a nephrologist in Sydney, Brendon further honed his clinical trials expertise with a Masters, PhD and postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Oxford, UNSW Sydney, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School. What fuels his passion for trials? “Clinical trials are the best way to improve the health of millions of people worldwide by better understanding what works and what doesn’t in healthcare settings,” he says. Since 2022, Brendon established and has led SMART-C, a global consortium pooling all the available clinical trial data for sodium- glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitors, a drug used for treating type 2 diabetes, heart failure and chronic kidney disease. The consortium includes data on over 90,000 patients enrolled in 13 global clinical trials.
NSLHDNEWS | ISSUE 19| 4 OCTOBER 2024 NSLHDNEWS | ISSUE 23| 29 NOVEMBER 2024
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