Mini Kidneys v.2.0
A group of researchers from the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California has created an organoid that resembles a system of collecting kidney tubules, which maintains the balance of fluid and pH of the body by concentrating and transporting urine.
Progress in the creation of new types of kidney organoids provides powerful tools not only for understanding development and disease, but also for finding new methods of treating kidney diseases.
Creating building blocks
The researchers started with a population of so-called kidney tubule progenitor cells, which play an important role in early kidney development. Using first mouse and then human progenitor cells, they were able to pick up a mixture of molecules that stimulates cells to form organoids resembling renal tubules. Scientists also managed to pick up a cocktail of molecules that encourage adult stem cells to develop into organoids of kidney tubules. This helped to create a mature and complex model of collecting tubes close to the original, either from mouse progenitor cells or from human stem cells.
An organoid that repeats the patterned distribution of the main (red) and intercalated (green) cells of the collecting tubule system of an adult kidney.
Organoids of the human and mouse tubule systems can also be genetically engineered to have mutations that cause various diseases – a tool for understanding and screening potential treatments for kidney disease. As an example, scientists knocked out a gene to create an organoid model of congenital anomalies of the kidneys and urinary tract (genital anomalies of the kidney and urinary tract, CAKUT).
Organoids of the kidney tubules are good not only as a model of the disease, they can be an important component of an artificial kidney. To investigate this possibility, the researchers combined the organoids of the tubules of the mouse kidney with a second population of mouse cells – progenitor cells forming nephrons, which are the filtering units of the kidney. After the introduction of the tubular germ grown in the laboratory into the culture of nephron progenitor cells, the group observed the growth of an extensive network of branched tubes resembling a system of collecting ducts fused with nephrons.
In this artificial mouse kidney, a connection was established between the nephron and the tubules, which is an important milestone on the way to creating an artificial functional organ.
Article Z.Zeng et al. Generation of patterned kidney organoids that recapitulate the adult kidney collecting duct system from expandable ureteric bud progenitors is published in the journal Nature Communications.
Aminat Adzhieva, portal "Eternal Youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru based on the materials of the Keck School of Medicine of USC: USC Stem Cell scientists make big progress in building mini-kidneys.