Artificial Kidneys may Abolish Dialysis
Scientists at University of California, San Francisco are developing a new approach to treating kidney failure, which could potentially free people from needing dialysis or harsh drugs to suppress their immune system after a transplant.
They have demonstrated that kidney cells housed in an implantable device called a bioreactor can survive inside the body of a pig and mimic several important kidney functions. The device works quietly in the background, like a pacemaker, and does not trigger the recipient’s immune system to attack.
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The findings, published in Nature Communications, are an important step forward for The Kidney Project, which is jointly headed by Shuvo Roy (technical director) and William H. Fissell (medical director). The aim is to produce a human-scale device to improve on dialysis, which keeps people alive after their kidneys fail but is a poor substitute for having a real working organ.
The team engineered the bioreactor to connect directly to blood vessels and veins, allowing the passage of nutrients and oxygen, much like a transplanted kidney would. Silicon membranes keep the kidney cells inside the bioreactor safe from attack by the recipient’s immune cells.
The next step will be month-long trials, as required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), first in animals and eventually in humans. The team has proven that a functional bioreactor will not require immunosuppressant drugs, and they can now iterate up, reaching for the whole panel of kidney functions at the human scale.
SOURCE: Vanguard
