LCN2 and acute kidney injury: At day 12, animals in the AKI group showed significantly elevated levels of several kidney injury markers compared to untreated controls, including blood urea nitrogen (BUN) (13.27 ± 1.26 vs. 150.23 ± 9.62 mg/dL, p < 0.05), creatinine (SCr) (0.31 ± 0.01 vs. 1.83 ± 0.08 mg/dL, p < 0.05), and NGAL (1.25 ± 0.19 vs. 4.54 ± 0.68 mg/mL, p < 0.05) (Fig. 1d).