regenerative medicine research is breaking down barriers apace 15 years after the discovery of human embryonic stem cells. Upon generation of miniature versions of the liver and brain, he now comes the turn of the human minirriñones. It is no longer derive any particular specialized cell line from stem cells, but of real bodies in 3D, although reduced or primordial version, similar to the first appearance of these structures during human development. It is still early to think about transplantation, but new minirriñones not just open that possibility in the medium term, but have immediate applications in fundamental finding treatments for kidney disease.
Juan Carlos Izpisúa and two teams at the Salk Institute in California and the Center of Regenerative Medicine in Barcelona, ??in collaboration with the bioengineering center CIBER-BBN and the Hospital Clínic in the same city, have created humans from minirriñones of the two main types of stem cells used in biomedical research, embryonic and iPS (induced pluripotent or), obtained back the clock of simple skin cells. Publish their results in Nature Cell Biology .
The ultimate goal of regenerative medicine is to tissues and organs for transplantation, and this scientific mecca, to be still full of formidable obstacles, flies over the imagination of any researcher in the field. Izpisúa openly acknowledges that his team’s work “offers hope that one day we can use our own cells to regenerate our ailing organs, thus solving the shortage of organs for transplantation.”
The advance makes possible to reproduce in a laboratory kidney ailments
But that goal is neither the only nor be the first to see the light of biomedical practice. If skin cells are obtained from a patient of any kidney disease, its conversion into iPS stem cells and subsequent differentiation to produce a human minirriñón which can investigate all the analytical power of contemporary cellular and molecular biology: on that body synthesis is able to do everything that you can do with a full patient, for painfully obvious ethical reasons.
Soon it will be derived from a thorough understanding of the biological causes of kidney disease. And scientists at La Jolla and Barcelona have tested the validity of the principle to derive minirriñones (the technical term is renal primordia ) of a patient of polycystic kidney disease (PKD, polycystic kidney disease ), progressive genetic damage kidneys. This material can be used now to dissect the causes of this incurable disease.
“One of the important clinical aspects of work,” says one of the authors, the Hospital Clinic nephrologist Josep Maria Campistol, “is that it can reproduce in the laboratory human renal diseases and evaluate different therapeutic strategies in models in vitro “. Campistol directs the Institute of Nephrology and Urology at the hospital in Barcelona.
Scientists also hope that miniórganos generated from iPS stem cells from patients to test batteries serve small molecule-drug candidates, that may alleviate the disease in question, for example destroy bad cells, or by stimulating the desirable , or correcting any biochemical reaction misguided. Using miniórganos, expect some investigators to improve and shorten the procedures that must pass a new drug to reach clinical trial. This is not an argument just for the kidney, but also for other miniórganos already created or soon will be.
But the kidney was a favorite target of the researchers, and in particular Izpisúa. The diseases of this organ are numerous and widespread, and often have a poor prognosis. The kidney has little ability to repair or regenerate itself, and many patients end up in the tail of the transplants, if they can join. Researchers hope that stem cells can help.
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