Can artificial kidneys finally free patients from dialysis?

Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco are working on a new approach to treating kidney failure, which could one day lead to people needing dialysis after a transplant or taking powerful drugs to suppress the immune system. There may be no need to do so.

They showed for the first time that kidney cells housed in an implantable device called a bioreactor can survive inside pigs and mimic several important kidney functions. The device works silently in the background, like a pacemaker, and the recipient’s immune system does not mount an attack.

The survey results are nature communications This will be held on August 29, 2023. kidney projectU.C.S.F. Shubho RoyPhD (Technical Director) and William H. Fishel, MD (Medical Director) of Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Ultimately, scientists filled the bioreactor with a variety of kidney cells that perform important functions such as balancing body fluids and releasing hormones that regulate blood pressure, and created a device that filters waste from the blood. I’m planning on combining them.

Bioartificial kidneys make kidney disease treatment not only more effective, but also more tolerable and comfortable. ”

The aim is to produce a human-scale device to improve dialysis. Dialysis keeps people alive after their kidneys fail, but it is a poor substitute for a functioning organ. More than 500,000 people in the United States require dialysis several times a week. Many people want a kidney transplant, but there is a shortage of donors and only about 20,000 people receive a kidney transplant each year. They would benefit from having a transplantable artificial kidney.

“We are focused on safely replicating the kidney’s critical functions,” said Roy, a professor of bioengineering in the UCSF School of Pharmacy. “Bioartificial kidneys will not only make the treatment of kidney disease more effective, but also more tolerable and comfortable.”

Kidney project greenlit

The research team tracked the kidney cells and recipient animals for seven days after transplantation, and both showed positive results. The next step will be a month-long trial, first in animals and eventually in humans, as required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“We needed to prove that immunosuppressants were not needed for a functioning bioreactor, and we were able to do that,” Roy said. “There were no complications and we are now able to iterate and reach a full panel of kidney function at a human scale.”

author: Additional authors from UCSF are Eun Jung Kim, PhD, Caressa Chen, MD, Rebecca Gologorsky, MD, Ana Santandreu, Alonso Torres, Nathan Wright, MS, Jarrett Moyer, MD, Benjamin W. Chui, PhD, Charles Blaha, MS, Paul This is Brakeman. , MD, PhD, Shant Vartanian, MD, and Qizhi Tang, PhD. See the paper for all authors.

Funding and disclosure: This research was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health (U01EB021214, R25EB023856) and philanthropy. Please see the paper for full funding sources and author disclosures.