On November 24, 2025, the Austrian Science Fund FWF approved the Principal Investigator project “Role of Afamin in cardiometabolic diseases”. The project will be led by Assoc.-Prof. Barbara Kollerits. This FWF funded project focuses, for the next four years, on the elucidation of the role of the vitamin E-binding glycoprotein afamin in cardiometabolic diseases such as chronic kidney disease (CKD), metabolic syndrome, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. In a large meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) on afamin in about 51,000 individuals, an aim is to identify genes that regulate plasma afamin concentrations. Furthermore, afamin will be measured in urine in overall ~13,000 individuals of the general population and a CKD cohort and subsequently GWAS on urine and the plasma-to-urine afamin ratio will be performed. To extent the knowledge on these mechanisms and pathways that link afamin to chronic conditions, a large-scale multi-omics approach will be applied.
Published and preliminary own data indicate that afamin is a promising marker for disease risk prediction in healthy and diseased individuals. The association of afamin with cardiometabolic diseases and the identification of relevant genes and metabolites could serve as basis for the development of functional experiments to refine and validate potential regulatory and causal mechanisms of this protein. This project has a high public health relevance, as diseases such as chronic kidney disease and diabetes are leading causes of death and affect millions of people worldwide.
- Link to FWF: https://www.fwf.ac.at/forschungsradar/10.55776/PAT1570025
- Further link: https://genepi.i-med.ac.at/team/kollerits-barbara/