GUANGHOU,Sept 8 (Xinhua/APP):- A Chinese team has grown, for the firsttime in the world, early kidneys from human stem cells inside pigembryos.
The advance that brings pig-grown human organs closer to reality willopen an exciting avenue for kidney transplants and a new window forstudying human kidney development, according to a study published onThursday in the journal Cell Stem Cell.
Scientists from Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health underthe Chinese Academy of Sciences used a gene-editing tool to engineercertain genes in human induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSCs) tostrengthen their capability to gain a foothold and form kidneys in pigembryos that are genetically modified to lack the ability to grow akidney.
IPSCs are a type of stem cells derived from adult skin or blood cellsand reprogrammed back into an embryonic-like state that enables thedevelopment of any type of human cell needed for therapeutic purposes.
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The study revealed that the researchers finally harvested five embryoswith organized human-pig chimeric middle-stage kidney structureswithin 28 days and those human donor cells could differentiate intofunctional cells.
The proportion of human cells in the chimeric kidneys reached up to 70percent, and the proportion of human cell contribution in theformation of mesonephric tubules reached a maximum of 58 percent,according to the paper.
