In a spectacular breakthrough, an international scientific team has developed a drug to prevent progression of the most common cause of kidney failure, diabetic kidney disease.

Type 2 diabetes is one of the world’s fastest-growing chronic diseases. The World Health Organization estimates it affects a whopping 420 million people globally — almost quadrupling in less than 40 years. As diabetes has become more common — now striking one in eight Americans — so has diabetic kidney disease.

Diabetic kidney disease (DKD), often fatal, is a long-term complication of diabetes. Researchers call it the most common cause of renal failure, affecting as many as one-third of people with Type 2 diabetes. Few treatment options exist to prevent progressive loss of renal function in victims of this cruel condition.

But the new drug, called 2H10, could be a game-changer in treating DKD. It was developed in a collaboration stretching back a decade between Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet (one of Europe’s leading medical universities) and Uppsala University along with Australia’s biggest biotechnical company, CSL.

Research team leader Dr. Ulf Eriksson, a professor at the Karolinska Institutet, says the work challenges a widely accepted belief in medical circles “that diabetic kidney disease is simply the result of chronic elevated blood glucose.”

Instead, the scientists developed a novel approach, targeting transportation of lipids — or fatty acids — from the blood into the body’s tissues using 2H10.

A report of on the team’s work appears this month in the peer-reviewed journal Cell Metabolism.

The drug, a monoclonal antibody, blocks signaling of a protein known as VEGF-B (Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor B), which governs the transportation and storage of lipids in body tissue. CSL has developed a version of 2H10 called CSL346 suitable for use in humans.

According to immunologist Dr. Andrew Nash, a member of the team and CSL’s senior vice-president of research, the breakthrough “addresses an important area of unmet medical need.”

Nash, who oversees CSL’s research laboratories in Melbourne, Australia, adds the research “could lead to an entirely new approach to the treatment of Type 2 diabetes.”

The new therapy works extremely well in laboratory conditions and tests on mice. Large-scale human trials, using the CSL346 version, will be conducted in Australia later this year. Doctors expect the treatment to be available in three to five years.

The key aim of the research was to devise a way to stop diabetes progressing into potentially deadly diabetic kidney disease.

The disease occurs when the kidney’s network of capillaries becomes scarred and less efficient in carrying out their task of filtering blood to purify it.

But 2H10 prevents fatty acids from accumulating in kidneys and damaging the vital blood vessels.

“With diabetes, the small blood vessels in the body are injured. When blood vessels in the kidneys are injured, your kidneys cannot clean your blood properly,” notes National Kidney Foundation. “Your body will retain more water and salt than it should, which can result in weight gain and ankle-swelling. You may have protein in your urine. Also, waste materials build up in your blood.

“Diabetes also may cause nerve damage. This can cause difficulty in emptying your bladder. The pressure resulting from your full bladder can back up and injure the kidneys. Also, if urine remains in your bladder for a long time, you can develop an infection from the rapid growth of bacteria in urine with a high sugar level.

The foundation also notes that end-stage kidney failure occurs when the kidneys are no longer able to function and dialysis or transplantation is needed.