Sci-Tech Technology News

The kidney as seen in a petri dish. Photo: UQ

A mini-kidney has been grown in an Australian laboratory from what were originally skin cells, boosting hopes for the future treatment of kidney disease.

The study adds support to a science-fiction-like goal of taking skin cells from a patient, using them to grow a kidney and then implanting it into the same patient, circumventing problems with transplant rejection.

The result of the work was a kidney measuring in the millimetres. The next step will be finding ways to increase its size.

The team who grew the mini-kidney: Professor Melissa Little, Dr Jessica Vanslambrouck and Dr Minoru Takasato. Photo: UQ

Lead researcher Professor Melissa Little spent years researching which genes were switched on or off during natural kidney development.

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The team manipulated skin cells that had been effectively turned into embryonic stem cells so that they began to "self-organise", arranging themselves into complex structures.

Professor Brandon Wainwright, the director of the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland, where the study was conducted, said this was the first time self-organisation has been observed in a kidney.

See the article here:
Australian scientists grow mini-kidney in lab

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