Sunday 27 January 2013

Kidney tissue grown from stem cells

In what could be breakthrough research for those with damaged kidneys, a group of Japanese scientists at Kyoto University report potential revolutionary results - they have grown human kidney tissue from stem cells.

Stem cells are famous for their ability to grow into any type of human tissue under the right conditions.

The team of pioneers had progressed to the point of formulating intermediate mesoderm tissue from the stem cells, a type of tissue developed midway to fully fledged organ tissue.

A scientist on the project, Kenji Osafune, said that the mesoderm tissue also known as embryonic intermediary could be developed in human beings into ‘specific kidney cells’ or artificially via a test tube.

It should be stressed that this is just the beginning of what could be a long journey to produce artificial kidneys from stem cells, but all such research has to begin somewhere. Indeed this initial work was not aimed at growing an entire kidney.

You can read more in this report and also here The original research was published in Nature Comms