In CKD, the risk of kidney failure and death depends on the severity of proteinuria, which
correlates with the extent of podocyte loss and glomerular scarring. We investigated whether
proteinuria contributes directly to progressive glomerulosclerosis through the suppression of
podocyte regeneration and found that individual components of proteinuria exert distinct
effects on renal progenitor survival and differentiation toward a podocyte lineage. In
particular, albumin prevented podocyte differentiation from human renal progenitors in vitro …