Kidney disease affects over 800 million people around the world. It is a major cause of illness and can be life-threatening. For many patients, dialysis and kidney transplantation are the best treatment options, but there are not enough donor kidneys available, and dialysis is associated with lowered quality of life. This underscores an urgent and unmet need for alternative therapies. Our research aims to develop a type of kidney tissue grown from stem cells, called a kidney organoid, that could one day be transplanted to help restore partial kidney function in patients with damaged kidneys.
Impact
Kidney organoids develop many of the important kidney cell types required for filtering waste out of the body. However, a challenge we face is that some unwanted cell types also grow sporadically within these organoids, as making stem cells turn into the right tissue type is challenging. Consequently, while directing them toward one cell type, we unintentionally generate others. The presence of these “off-target” cells could interfere with how well the organoids work as transplantable tissue.
reNEW research
Our goal is to develop improved methods to reduce or remove these off-target cell populations during organoid development. We also want to understand if and how these unwanted cell types affect the formation and function of the kidney’s filtering units, called nephrons. By refining our approach, we hope to create functional kidney organoids that contain only renal cell types that can one day be used as a transplantable therapy to improve the lives of people living with kidney disease.
Image description
This image depicts kidney organoids, which are lab-grown mini kidneys. They have developing tubes with different features, similar to those in a developing human kidney. However, unwanted tissue has formed between these structures. These smooth, spherical structures nestled between the tubules are cartilage. While visually striking, our goal is to refine the process and clean this up to produce exclusively kidney tissue.
Credits
Dr Allara Zylberberg, Research Officer, Little Lab, reNEW Melbourne.
