A new, experimental drug appears to reduce the size and the number of cysts when tested on mice.
PKD is a common fatal inherited disease, and at the present moment there is no treatment available for it. Eventually it leads to loss of kidney function, and eventually dialysis or a transplant becomes necessary.
By inhibiting a receptor called c-Met, the drug lead to less cyst formation. It was tested by giving the compound to pregnant mice and examining their embryos.
The next stage to continue the research, trying adult mice, other animal models and eventually, check the drug's usefulness in humans. With all drug research, this will be a long and careful process to avoid any side effects.
The research article can be read at The Journal of Clinical Investigation. It's a very technical article, as you'd expect for a research paper.
Thursday, 23 September 2010
Thursday, 9 September 2010
Implantable Artificial Kidney - coming soon
A recent news item immediately caught my eye. It described research led by Dr Shuvo Roy at the University of California San Francisco on an implantable artificial kidney (and another link to the work). The plan is to produce a device the size of a coffee cup.
A filtering membrane will be produced using the same silicon fabrication technology as used in the computer industry to create the fine details of computer chips, allowing very small holes to be created for the filtration process.
Specially engineered compartments, called a BioCartridge, will be created to hold the patient's own kidney cells. This 'bioreactor' part of the device will be grown on the matrix that acts as the filter.
Mr Bole said: 'Those cells will perform the other functions of the original kidney cells, such as regulating vitamin D levels, water levels and metabolic function. So patients would NOT need immunosuppressant drugs because the device will use each patient’s own cells.'
We hear of wearable dialysis machines at regular intervals (our February 2010 post on this topic), but this device could be one step beyond that, and reduce the problems of finding suitable donors for transplants (although we have also posted on methods which allow transplants where the donor is not a close match for the recipient).
A filtering membrane will be produced using the same silicon fabrication technology as used in the computer industry to create the fine details of computer chips, allowing very small holes to be created for the filtration process.
Specially engineered compartments, called a BioCartridge, will be created to hold the patient's own kidney cells. This 'bioreactor' part of the device will be grown on the matrix that acts as the filter.
Mr Bole said: 'Those cells will perform the other functions of the original kidney cells, such as regulating vitamin D levels, water levels and metabolic function. So patients would NOT need immunosuppressant drugs because the device will use each patient’s own cells.'
We hear of wearable dialysis machines at regular intervals (our February 2010 post on this topic), but this device could be one step beyond that, and reduce the problems of finding suitable donors for transplants (although we have also posted on methods which allow transplants where the donor is not a close match for the recipient).
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