A mini-kidney formed in a dish from human induced pluripotent stem cellsMINORU TAKASATOIn a time when organoids are becoming commonplace in the lab, a research team from Australia and the Netherlands has successfully generated structures that resemble embryonic kidneys from human stem cells. In addition to being a step in the right direction for eventual lab-grown kidneys for transplant, the structures could help scientists screen drugs for toxicity and model normal and diseased kidney function, the authors argue in Nature today (October 7).
“It’s not a kidney, it’s a kidney model,” study coauthor Melissa Little of the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia, told The Australian. “But it’s a hell of a lot better than we’ve had before.”
“The structure’s fine-scale tissue organization is realistic, but it does not adopt the macro-scale organization of a whole kidney,” Jamie Davies of the University of Edinburgh wrote in an accompanying commentary. “There is a long way to go until transplantable kidneys can be engineered, but [the new] protocol is a valuable step in the right direction.”
The researchers used signaling factors to direct the differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) into two kidney precursor cell populations: one that forms the collecting ducts and the other that forms ...
