[ad_1]
In a study with important implications for human organ transplantation, researchers were able to grow functional mouse kidneys in rats from a few donor stem cells.
The results of the study, led by researchers from the National Institute of Physiological Sciences of Japan, will be published in an upcoming issue of Nature Communications.
For patients with end-stage renal failure, a kidney transplant is the only hope for a quality of life. Yet, many of these patients will never undergo transplant surgery because of a chronic shortage of donor kidneys. In the United States, with 95,000 patients on the waiting list for a donor kidney, the demand far exceeds the supply.
But researchers have been working on ways to develop healthy organs outside the human body. One of these methods, called complementation of the blastocyst, has already given promising results. The researchers take blastocysts, clusters of cells formed several days after fertilization of the egg, in mutant animals devoid of specific organs, and inject them with stem cells from a normal donor, not necessarily of the same kind. The stem cells then differentiate to form the missing organ in the resulting animal. The new organ retains the characteristics of the original stem cell donor and can therefore potentially be used in transplantation.
"We had previously used the complementation of the blastocyst to generate rat pancreas in apancreatic mutant mice," says lead author of the new Teppei Goto study. "So we decided to investigate whether the method could be used to generate functional kidneys, which would have a much greater application in regenerative medicine because of the high demand from donors."
Early attempts by researchers to grow rat kidneys in mice were unsuccessful because rat stem cells do not readily differentiate into two main types of cells required for kidney formation. However, when the reverse scenario was attempted, mouse stem cells differentiated efficiently inside rat blastocysts, thus forming the basic structures of a kidney.
After implantation in pseudopregnant rats, complemented blastocysts became normal fetuses. Remarkably, more than two-thirds of the newborn rats obtained contained a pair of kidneys derived from mouse stem cells. Further screening showed that all kidneys were structurally intact and that at least half of them could potentially produce urine.
"Our results confirm that interspecific complementation of blastocysts is a viable method for kidney generation," explains the study's corresponding author, Masumi Hirabayashi. "In the future, this approach could be used to generate organs derived from human stem cells in cattle, potentially extending the lifespan and improving the quality of life for millions of people around the world."
Summary: The chronic worldwide shortage of kidneys from donors has made many end-stage renal failure patients dependent on continuous dialysis treatment. To address the shortage of donor kidneys, a team led by researchers from the National Institute of Physiological Sciences of Japan attempted to grow mouse kidneys inside rats at the same time. using transplanted stem cells. The resulting kidneys appeared to be functional, providing a proof of concept that this approach could be used to generate human kidneys inside the cattle.
Source of the story:
Material provided by National Institutes of Natural Sciences. Note: Content can be changed for style and length.
Source link
