Kidney disease affects one in nine adults globally and the incidence of kidney failure is steadily rising around the world. Being able to grow working kidney tissue in a laboratory could help accelerate medical treatments for kidney disease and restore kidney function. The kidney forms normally in humans as a result of two building blocks—metanephric mesenchyme and ureteric bud. The laboratory of Joseph Bonventre, MD, Ph.D., Chief of the Renal Unit and Founding Chief of the Engineering in Medicine Division at the Brigham, figured out how to generate the first building block—metanephric mesenchyme—resulting in many components of the kidney from human stem cells seven years ago.
The same laboratory has now developed a highly efficient method to generate the second building block (ureteric bud), which matures into the adult kidney collecting system. Furthermore, they demonstrated features of interaction between the cells of these two building blocks, reproducing aspects of interaction which normally occur when the kidney develops. In addition, for the first time ever, the Bonventre laboratory has developed human cell lines of principal and intercalated cell lines, the two cell lines that make up the last urine processing component of the kidney… Continue reading.