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©The Author(s) 2026. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Diabetes. Jan 15, 2026; 17(1): 114082
Published online Jan 15, 2026. doi: 10.4239/wjd.v17.i1.114082
Published online Jan 15, 2026. doi: 10.4239/wjd.v17.i1.114082
Exploring novel pathways and potential therapeutic targets for diabetic nephropathy: The interplay of podocytes and proximal tubular epithelial cells
Tarek S Abdelaziz, Department of Nephrology, Kasr Alainy School of Medicine, Cairo University Hospitals, Cairo 11562, Egypt
Author contributions: Abdelaziz TS contributed solely to the conceptualisation, writing up and review of the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The author reports no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Tarek S Abdelaziz, MD, FRCP, Department of Nephrology, Kasr Alainy School of Medicine, Cairo University Hospitals, Kasr Alainy, Cairo 11562, Egypt.
Received: September 11, 2025
Revised: October 15, 2025
Accepted: November 25, 2025
Published online: January 15, 2026
Processing time: 125 Days and 12.7 Hours
Revised: October 15, 2025
Accepted: November 25, 2025
Published online: January 15, 2026
Processing time: 125 Days and 12.7 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: This article sheds light on the interesting study by Zha et al. In this experimental study, a novel pathogenic pathway has been described. A novel concept was also demonstrated, namely the crosstalk between the podocytes and the proximal tubular epithelial cells. The crosstalk involves the secretion of interleukin 6 by the proximal tubular epithelial cells, which aggravates nephrin endocytosis in the podocytes using the Rab5 activation pathway. The application of nicotinamide mononucleotide nicotinamide mononucleotide intercepted the pathway. A new horizon for therapeutics could be further explored using the nicotinamide mononucleotide.