Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Credit: Minoru Takasato/Nature
“It’s like a recipe. We put different concentrations and types of growth factors in a certain order into the dish. And then when it gets to a certain size we take all the cells and make it into a ball.”
Creating stem cells is one thing, but coaxing them to become the tissue you want is difficult. Recent breakthroughs and hard work have revealed more information about which growth factors trigger what type of tissue growth, and the team experimented with different cocktails to produce the desired kidney growth. Little steps The researchers haven’t completed the tiny kidney yet, but they were able to create most of the major structures, including key filtration units called nephrons. The process will need more work to create a full functioning, larger kidney, but it’s a great start. Little organoids being made across the world aren’t yet ready for transplantation, but they could be used to help boost specific processes in failing organs. There is also interest from pharmaceutical companies, as miniature humans organs would be better to test over animal subjects.“The really long-term application and the thing we’re all trying to do is to produce from a patient’s own cells to produce new kidneys for them”
Read more at NPRCopyright © Gowing Life Limited, 2025 • All rights reserved • Registered in England & Wales No. 11774353 • Registered office: Ivy Business Centre, Crown Street, Manchester, M35 9BG.