Demonstrating an Integrated and Functional Kidney Organoid

Researchers have recently demonstrated in pigs the integration of an engineered kidney organoid, a few centimeters of kidney tissue grown from stem cells. The tissue functions as a kidney should, but it is far from full size, and does not bear all of the hallmarks of the real thing. However, enough of the normal suite of additional connections were also produced by the researchers involved to allow surgical integration of the organoid with the excretory system, and thus demonstrate generation of urine. This work well illustrates the nature of the challenges that lie ahead for the field of tissue engineering. It isn't enough to build correctly functioning organ tissue, challenging as that is and still very much a work in progress. Connections to circulatory and other systems in the body must also exist, and each of these is its own distinct engineering task. A replacement organ whose principal job is chemical processing or filtration of one sort or another doesn't have to be shaped or structured in exactly the same way as the evolved version we're all equipped with at birth, but it does have to integrate with all of the surrounding organs and systems. That places constraints on the development of engineered organs, and presents a set of intricate challenges akin to those involved in carrying out an organ transplant. The kidney organoids demonstrated in pigs in the research linked below are a step ahead of the first prototypes to get the tissue structure and functionality cor...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs