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ORPHA:1309

Medullary sponge kidney

low confidenceDisorder

Also known as: Cacchi-Ricci disease · MSK · Precalicial canalicular ectasia

Publications

1,240

Trials

1

Interventional, condition-specific

Researchers

1,089

Distinct authors in sample

Gene link

—

Readiness

3/6

Stages with a signal

Clinical definition (Orphanet)

A rare renal tract characterized by dilated of the medullary collecting ducts (typically bilateral), and associated with stone formation, renal colic, hematuria, urinary tract infection, nephrocalcinosis, calcium nephrolithiasis, pyelonephritis, hypercalciuria and hypocitraturia. The disease is associated with abnormal distal tubular functions.

How rare: How common this is has not been clearly measured.

Orphanet entry

Cross-references

Joined from Mondo / Orphanet. MeSH labels may enter searches; UMLS / OMIM / NCIT are stored for reference.

Research stages

Trial readiness signals

Where this condition sits on an open-data research pipeline — not how close a treatment is, and not medical advice. Empty stages often mean “not in these databases under this Mondo ID,” not “impossible.”

3/6 stages with a signal

An interventional trial matched this condition name on ClinicalTrials.gov — see trials below.

  1. Gene identifiedNot found

    No GenCC disease–gene assertion in this build

  2. LiteraturePresent

    1,240 matched papers (417 in last 10 years) Source

  3. Phenotype characterisedPresent

    5 HPO annotations (e.g. Hematuria; Hemihypertrophy; Hypercalciuria) Source

  4. Animal modelNot found

    No Alliance genotype “model of” associations via Monarch for these Mondo IDs

  5. Orphan designationNot found

    No FDA or EMA orphan-drug designation matched this disease via UMLS or preferred name Source

  6. Interventional trialPresent

    1 matched on ClinicalTrials.gov

Biology

Genes and phenotypes

Gene–disease validity from GenCC, plus phenotypes and animal models joined from Monarch Initiative via Mondo ID — not a clinical diagnosis aid.

Do we know what causes it?

Not yet — the cause hasn't been pinned down in GenCC.

No strong gene–disease assertion joined for this Orphanet entity.

Phenotypes (Monarch / HPO)

5

Associated phenotypes · MONDO:0015268

  • Hematuria
  • Hemihypertrophy
  • Hypercalciuria
  • Distal renal tubular acidosis
  • Kidney stone

Animal models (Monarch / Alliance)

None returned for this Mondo ID. Empty here is not proof that no model organism work exists under another name or gene.

Monarch fetch 2026-07-29

Therapies

Designations, candidates, and chemicals

FDA OOPD and EMA orphan designations, Open Targets clinical candidates, and CTD chemical associations via MyDisease.info. These never change the interventional-trial headline.

Orphan designation (FDA · EMA)

No designation matched this disease via UMLS or preferred name on the FDA OOPD mirror or EMA orphan register. Absence here is not proof that none exists under another wording.

Open Targets candidates

No drugs or clinical candidates returned for this Mondo ID on Open Targets.

CTD chemicals (MyDisease.info)

No CTD chemical associations returned for this Mondo ID.

Literature

Is anyone studying this?

1,240

1,240 papers have been published on this condition. That is a real research literature — still far smaller than common diseases (breast cancer: over 700,000 papers). Median papers in the last 10 years for a rare disease in this dataset (publications denominator n=3967) is 59.

1,240 papers since the earliest indexed year in this search — median last-10-year count for a rare disease in this dataset is 59 (publications denominator n=3967).

417 in the last 10 years · low confidence

Phrase hits: 1,240 · MeSH hits: 0

Open Europe PMC search

Who's working on it?

1,089

Distinct author names in 200 sampled papers — named people below.

Who's working on it?

People publishing on this condition (sampled Europe PMC records). Affiliation is the most recent found in that sample.

  1. 01
    Gambaro G7 papers · 2023

    Division of Nephrology, Department of Medical Sciences, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Rome, Italy.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  2. 02
    Zaza G6 papers · 2022

    Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, University of Verona, Verona, Italy.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  3. 03
    Bruschi M5 papers · 2022

    Laboratory of Molecular Nephrology, IRCCS Istituto Giannina Gaslini, 16147 Genova, Italy.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  4. 04
    Candiano G5 papers · 2022

    Laboratory of Molecular Nephrology, IRCCS Istituto Giannina Gaslini, 16147 Genova, Italy.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  5. 05
    Granata S5 papers · 2022

    Renal Unit, Department of Medicine, University/Hospital of Verona, Piazzale A. Stefani 1, 37126 Verona, Italy.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  6. 06
    Ghiggeri GM4 papers · 2022

    Division of Nephrology, Dialysis and Transplantation, IRCCS Istituto Giannina Gaslini, 16147 Genova, Italy.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  7. 07
    Goldfarb DS4 papers · 2026

    Nephrology Section, New York Harbor VAMC, St. Vincent's Hospital, New York, NY, USA.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  8. 08
    Hsi RS4 papers · 2024

    Department of Urology, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA. ryan.hsi@vumc.org.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  9. 09
    Letavernier E4 papers · 2026

    Service d'Explorations fonctionnelles multidisciplinaires, Hôpital Tenon, Assistance Publique Hôpitaux de Paris, Paris, France.

    Papers in Europe PMC
  10. 10
    Li J4 papers · 2025

    Department of Urology, Beijing Tsinghua Changgung Hospital, School of Clinical Medicine, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 102218, China.

    Papers in Europe PMC

Clinical research

Is a treatment being tested?

1

interventional trials for this specific condition

1 interventional trial matched this specific condition name; none in our sample are currently recruiting.

Data as of 11 September 2026

1 interventional trial — more than 77.2% of diseases in the trials denominator have none at all (5501 of 7126; this disease is at the 80.1th percentile).

low confidence · 80.1th percentile (trials denominator)

Recruiting interventional trials

From the matched ClinicalTrials.gov set

1 interventional trials matched after quoted-phrase search and title/condition post-filter.

No currently recruiting studies in the matched set. Open the same search on ClinicalTrials.gov.

Observational and natural-history studies

1 observational study matches this condition. These do not test a treatment and are not counted in the interventional-trial headline, but they are genuine research: natural-history work often defines the endpoints needed for a future rare-disease trial, and families may be able to enroll.

None of the matched observational studies is currently listed as recruiting.

Open the complete matched search on ClinicalTrials.gov

Other registries (secondary)

Broader net from EU CTIS, ISRCTN, and ICTRP when available — deduped against ClinicalTrials.gov IDs already counted above. Dual-model LLM relevance gates what we keep. These rows are not added to the interventional headline.

raw 0 · after dedupe 0 · already on CT.gov 0 · kept 0 · parent 0 · uncertain 0 · dropped 0 · fetched 2026-07-29

Source notes: ictrp: Error: ICTRP public search unavailable (WHO portal is SPA-only; SOAP needs partnership). Tried: https://apps.who.int/tri

No secondary-registry studies passed dual-model relevance for this condition name (after dedupe).

Where to find support

Condition-specific patient organisations, when Orphanet lists them, are on the disease’s Orphanet page. We also link umbrella groups that support undiagnosed and ultra-rare families.

Orphanet entry for Medullary sponge kidney — check Associations / patient organisations on that page.

India — NPRD

Last verified 2026-07-26

This ORPHAcode is not on our curated NPRD list (direct or Mondo-parent match). That does not decide clinical eligibility; families in India should ask a notified Centre of Excellence about current coverage.

Hand-curated for this project. ORPHAcode mappings are best-effort and may be incomplete or imprecise for umbrella categories. Parent (Mondo) matches mean the policy lists a broader category — confirm eligibility with a Centre of Excellence. Financial entitlements summarised from public policy statements and may change. This is not official government guidance.

How we counted this

Europe PMC query (preferred label + any corrected label + Orphanet and Mondo exact synonyms, stoplisted; unioned with resolved MeSH labels when available). UMLS / OMIM / NCIT cross-references are stored on the overview but are not added to the query string.

"Medullary sponge kidney" OR "Cacchi-Ricci disease" OR "Precalicial canalicular ectasia"

Run this search on Europe PMC

ClinicalTrials.gov query (quoted phrases + MeSH via query.cond, plus recall-expansion terms when used):

"Medullary sponge kidney" OR "Cacchi-Ricci disease" OR "Precalicial canalicular ectasia"

Interventional trials matched via: phrase (mesh = registered under a MeSH descriptor no name phrase would catch; recall-expansion = gene / selected parent terms used only for trials).

Study-type breakdown: 1 interventional · 1 observational · 0 expanded access. Only interventional studies enter the trial headline.

Query health: ok — strategies attempted: phrase; with hits: phrase

Run this search on ClinicalTrials.gov

Synonyms dropped by stoplist: MSK

Confidence reasoning

  • Preferred label is multi-word and distinctive
  • 1 synonym(s) dropped by stoplist (may under-count)
  • No label/synonym collisions with other diseases in this corpus
  • Publication count (1240) is extremely high with unknown/missing prevalence — treat as possible over-matching, not proven research intensity

Ingested 2026-07-26T17:00:12.874Z