Severe ischemia-reperfusion injury induces epigenetic inactivation of LHX1 in kidney progenitor cells after kidney transplantation.

Severe ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI) causes acute and chronic kidney allograft damage. As therapeutic interventions to reduce damage are limited yet, research on how to promote kidney repair has gained significant interest. To address this question, we performed genome-wide transcriptome and epigenome profiling in progenitor cells isolated from the urine of deceased (severe IRI) and living (mild IRI) donor human kidney transplants and identified LIM homeobox-1 (LHX1) as an epigenetically regulated gene whose expression depends on the IRI severity.