A kidney that was grown in a laboratory has been successfully transplanted into a rat, marking a step forward in helping patients suffering from kidney failure.
Scientists said the prototype proves that a
"bio-kidney" can work, emulating breakthroughs elsewhere to build
replacement structures for livers, hearts and lungs.
Described
in the journal Nature Medicine, the work entailed taking a rat kidney
and stripping out its old cells using a detergent solution, leaving
behind a shell made of collagen.
The
next step was to repopulate this empty structure with living cells,
comprising human endothelial cells, which line the walls of blood
vessels in the kidney, and kidney cells taken from newborn rats.
The trick was then to "seed" these cells in the correct part of the kidney, using a muscle duct called the ureter as a tube.
The team transplanted the organ into living rats from which a kidney had been removed.
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