Mini-kidneys "in vitro"
The success of Australian scientists: kidneys from human stem cells
LifeSciencesToday based on University of Queensland: UQ researchers grow kidney from stem cellsScientists from the University of Queensland have announced a huge step forward in the treatment of chronic kidney disease: they have grown a mini-kidney from human induced pluripotent stem cells.
This breakthrough opens the way to improving the effectiveness of the treatment of patients with kidney diseases and foreshadows a good future for such an area as medical bioengineering.
"One in three Australians is at risk of developing chronic kidney disease and the only currently available treatments are kidney transplantation and dialysis," says study leader Melissa Little, professor at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) UQ, emphasizing the urgent need to develop new methods treatment of kidney diseases.
"Only one out of four patients will receive a donor organ, and dialysis is a continuous treatment. We need to improve the outcomes of treating patients with this most serious disease, which costs Australia $1.8 billion. per year."
Australian researchers have developed a protocol that stimulates the differentiation of stem cells into cells of all necessary types and their further self-organization into mini-kidneys.
"During self–organization, different types of cells are arranged relative to each other in such a way that they create complex structures that exist inside the organ, in this case, in the kidney," Professor Little continues. "The fact that such stem cell populations can self-organize under laboratory conditions bodes well for the future of tissue bioengineering, which aims to replace damaged and diseased organs and tissues."
The key to achieving this result was perfectly matched combinations of molecules called growth factors.
By providing stem cells with certain concentrations of growth factors at a certain time, scientists were able to make them grow and differentiate in a process that mimicked normal development.
Professor Little has spent years researching which genes are turned on or off during kidney development.
"We had to take the cells through all the stages that they usually go through during development," explains the scientist. "What we need to add was prompted by what usually happens during development."
The initial goal of the scientists was to achieve differentiation of stem cells into only one type of kidney cells. But they were surprised to find that two key types of cells were formed, each of which is necessary for the formation of an organ.
The result of this success was that the cells that turned out to be capable of self-organization created a complex structure peculiar to the kidneys with a size of several millimeters.
"It is much smaller than an adult kidney. Essentially, it's a small developing kidney," Little comments.
Grown from human stem cells
a mini-kidney is an analogue of the kidney of a five–week embryo.
(Photo: Gemma Ward/UQ)
These results surpassed the recent achievement of American scientists, also published in the journal Nature Cell Biology.
According to Little, "what we got is a much more complex set of cells. In terms of what is possible today, this is a huge step forward.
Brandon Wainwright, director of the Institute of Molecular Biosciences, considers the study "very promising."
"It sounds like science fiction, but Melissa and her colleagues have shown that it is really possible to grow a kidney in a Petri dish, starting with human skin cells," says Professor Wainwright.
Professor Little warns that there is a long way to go before this method is ready for clinical trials in humans, but they have already made an impressive step forward.
In addition, in the near future, this achievement can be used to grow mini-kidneys acting as "guinea pigs". This will give huge savings in money and time when testing candidate drugs that are not related to kidney diseases. Little and her colleagues are already negotiating with commercial partners about the development of this technology.
Congratulating Professor Little, Queensland Minister of Science and Innovation Ian Walker said biomedical research is essential in ensuring a healthier future for Queenslanders. He is confident that "the study by a group of scientists from IMB is an important milestone in the development of more effective methods of treating chronic kidney disease, giving patients with this disease confidence that they will be able to live a full and productive life."
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru18.12.2013