Regeneration of Kidneys by Stem Cells
INTRODUCTION
Regeneration is a holy grail in medicine. Characterizing the role of stem cells in the adult kidney is at the hub of current renal stem cell research. Kidney regeneration by stem cells is a complex process. Kidney ranks very high in its ability to repair because of its ability to survive injury and restore its function. Significant advances have been made in stem cell research over the past decades. These discoveries have been a major step towards the use of stem cells for potential clinical applications in organ regeneration. Accordingly, Kidney regeneration is gaining considerable attention to replace kidney transplant and kidney dialysis. However, due to anatomic complications, kidney is the hardest organ to regenerate.Kidney retains the potential to regenerate only if the damage is not to severe, and the kidney structure remains intact. It was previously believed that bone-marrow derived stem cells can differentiate into renal-resident cells and participate in kidney regeneration after renal ischemia. However, recent studies have suggested that the number of bone-marrow derived cells that engraft injured tubules and develop into renal tissue is very low, and thus, their overall contribution to renal repair is minor in acute kidney injury. Reference: http://www.hsci.harvard.edu/newsroom/kidney-repair-shop http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijn/2011/591731/ |
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