New insights into the immunity and podocyte in glomerular health and disease: From pathogenesis to therapy in proteinuric kidney disease

Evidence has been furnished that immune cells, and immune-podocytes interactions have increasingly become the focus of proteinuric kidney diseases, which affect millions of patients worldwide. Podocytes are highly specialized, terminally differentiated epithelial cells that wrap around the glomerulus to maintain the integrity of the glomerular filtration barrier. More recent studies demonstrate that podocytes express many elements of the innate and adaptive immune system including the complement components and receptors, through which podocytes can be involved in immune-mediated glomerular injuries and as a therapeutic target to alleviate the podocyte injury and progression to chronic kidney disease. The present review will shed light on recent findings, which have furthered our understanding of the immune mechanisms involved in podocyte injury, as well as the therapeutic implications in the treatment of immune-mediated glomerular injury.