Dysfunction of the ER chaperone BiP accelerates the renal tubular injury

Tubular-interstitial injury plays a key role in the progression of chronic kidney disease. Although endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress plays significant roles in the development of chronic diseases such as neurodegenerative disease, cardiomyopathy and diabetes mellitus, its pathophysiological role in chronic renal tubular cell injury remains unknown. BiP is an essential chaperone molecule that helps with proper protein folding in the ER. Recently, we have produced a knock-in mouse that expresses a mutant-BiP in which the retrieval sequence to the ER is deleted in order to elucidate physiological processes that are sensitive to ER functions in adulthood. The heterozygous mutant-BiP mice showed significant tubular-interstitial lesions with aging. Furthermore, proteinuria induced by chronic protein overload accelerated the tubular-interstitial lesions in the mutant mice, accompanying caspase-12 activation and tubular cell apoptosis. These results suggest that the ER stress pathway is significantly involved in the pathophysiology of chronic renal tubular-interstitial injury in vivo.