Personalized risk-based management of IgA Nephropathy – UBC/BCR PWR (May 2026)

Dr. Sean Barbour presents his talk, “Towards personalized risk-based management of IgA Nephropathy,” as part of BC Renal and UBC’s province-wide rounds. 0:04:00 – Incidence of IgA Nephropathy Dr. Barbour begins by noting that British Columbia is a particularly good place to study and provide care for IgA nephropathy (IgAN), pointing to several experts in the province and the establishment of the BC GN registry, which captures data on patients from across the province. He shares data on incidence rates of IgAN in BC, but notes that incidence is not uniform across the province – he points to four clusters where incidence is significantly higher, and it’s not attributable to demographics (e.g., being of east or south Asian descent). 0:12:00 – Risk of kidney failure or death Dr. Barbour compares outcomes between BC and UK cohorts on the risk of kidney failure in patients with IgAN, as well as mortality trends in BC. The results show that IgAN patients are at increased risk of dying, even before reaching end stage kidney disease, which needs to be studied further. 0:17:00 – Personalized risk Dr. Barbour then talks about efforts to stratify individual patients based on their personal risk of kidney failure. He highlights efforts by him and his colleagues to create the International IgAN Prediction Tool, which includes two models (with/without ethnicity). The tool has been validated by multiple groups, showing it is good at predicting patient outcomes up to 15 years out. Dr. Barbour notes that many different versions of the tool exist, for adults and children, and are available for free as an app. He provides an overview of how the app predicts long terms kidney outcomes over time. 0:29:00 – Predicting response to treatment Dr. Barbour points to data from the TESTING trial to identify predictor data of patients who will and will not benefit from treatment with corticosteroids. He notes that some patients can benefit greatly from corticosteroids, while other do not. He discusses how his team evaluated their PRED-IgA model which predicts patients’ absolute reduction in 4-year risk of 40% decline in eGFR, ESKD or renal death if they are treated with steroids versus without. 0:44:00 – New therapies Dr. Barbour notes that new therapies for IgAN are becoming available in the U.S. and discusses the country’s framework for drug approval. He highlights some clinical trials that BC has participated in, including the ORIGIN 3 phase three trial investigating atacicept, which has yielded promising interim results. He also highlights early trial results on sefaxersen, suggesting the drug inhibits complement and improves proteinuria. Lastly, he shares results on a trial investigating felartamab. 0:1:00 – Q&A Dr. Barbour takes questions from the audience.