chronic-kidney-disease
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Rectify Pharma bets on proteins that need a helping hand
A cystic-fibrosis lesson became a $100 million biotech bet: help faulty membrane proteins do their jobs. Rectify’s lead liver-disease candidate is now in Phase 1, with a kidney-disease partnership behind it.
Mediar Therapeutics wants to stop the scar makers
Three hospital research programs became one biotech with a shared suspicion: fibrosis might be interrupted where scar tissue is made. Now Mediar is testing that idea in lungs, skin and kidneys - with Lilly and Ono taking an interest.
Cricket Health Bet on the Hours Before the Emergency
Kidney failure is often treated as a sudden event, though the clues arrive years earlier. Cricket Health built a business around finding those clues - and giving patients time to choose what happened next.
NeoDocs
NeoDocs is a Mumbai health-tech company that turns a smartphone into a diagnostic reader. Users dip a paper test card in a urine sample, scan it with the NeoDocs app, and get lab-referenced results in under a minute - covering kidney, metabolic and general wellness markers. Founded by three IIT Bombay alumni and backed by Y Combinator (S21) and Omidyar Network India, it sells test kits direct to consumers and works with thousands of doctors across India.
FibroGen, Inc.
FibroGen, Inc. is a San Francisco biopharmaceutical company that spent three decades building first-in-class medicines around hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) and connective tissue growth factor (CTGF) biology. Its best-known drug, roxadustat, is an oral treatment for anemia approved in China, Japan and Europe. After selling its China business to AstraZeneca in 2025 and paying down debt, the company rebranded as Kyntra Bio (Nasdaq: KYNB) in January 2026 to concentrate on oncology and rare disease, led by FG-3246, a first-in-class CD46-targeting antibody-drug conjugate for metastatic prostate cancer.
Alio
Alio is a Broomfield, Colorado medical technology company that builds a non-invasive, continuous remote patient monitoring platform for people with chronic conditions. Its flagship SmartPatch - the world's first non-invasive potassium monitor - is worn over a patient's vascular access site and tracks metrics such as potassium, hemoglobin, hematocrit, heart rate, skin temperature and auscultation sounds, sending clinician-ready data to care teams via a bedside hub, cloud and portal. Founded in 2012 (originally as Graftworx) by David Kuraguntla and Samit Gupta, Alio focuses first on end-stage kidney disease and dialysis patients, aiming to replace infrequent blood draws with continuous data and cut avoidable hospitalizations.
Balboa Nephrology
Balboa Nephrology is one of the largest kidney-care medical groups in California, founded in San Diego in 1973 and grown from two physicians to roughly 60-plus board-certified nephrologists across San Diego, Orange County and Imperial Valley. It manages more than 28,000 kidney patients and 6,000 dialysis and transplant patients, runs its own clinical-research arm (Balboa Research, formerly the California Institute of Renal Research), a Vascular Access Center, and the Balboa Institute of Transplantation, and is a national leader in value-based kidney care through a joint venture with Evergreen Nephrology.
Steve Steinberg
Steve Steinberg is a San Diego nephrologist who helped grow Balboa Nephrology Medical Group from a tiny two-physician practice into the largest nephrology group in California, now spanning roughly 60 board-certified nephrologists, dozens of clinical offices and scores of dialysis clinics. As CEO-Medical Director he has steered Balboa toward value-based kidney care, where the group posts some of the strongest national outcomes in CMS and CMMI programs, while championing the idea that kidney patients should never feel alone in their care.
Blaine McKee
Blaine McKee is the president and CEO of Walden Biosciences, a Cambridge, Massachusetts biotech building first-in-class medicines that go after the kidney itself instead of just slowing the road to dialysis. A chemist turned dealmaker turned operator, he launched Walden with a $51 million Series A in 2020 and now steers two clinical-stage programs: WAL0921, an anti-suPAR antibody, and WAL0623, a small-molecule dynamin stabilizer. Before Walden he spent 15 years at Genzyme and held top corporate-development roles at Shire and ImmunoGen, pairing an MIT organic-chemistry PhD with an MIT Sloan finance MBA.
Walden Biosciences
Walden Biosciences is a Cambridge, Massachusetts clinical-stage biotech building first-in-class, disease-modifying medicines that target the kidney directly instead of just delaying the slide toward dialysis. Founded in 2020 on the podocyte and suPAR research of renal scientist Jochen Reiser and colleagues, Walden pairs an antibody program (WAL0921, against soluble urokinase plasminogen activator receptor) with a small-molecule program (WAL0623, a dynamin stabilizer) to protect and restore the kidney's filtration cells. Backed by ARCH Venture Partners, UCB Ventures, Mass General Brigham Ventures and ATEM Capital, the company is advancing WAL0921 through a Phase 2 basket study across common and rare glomerular kidney diseases.