The bioartificial kidney is an innovative approach to the treatment of renal failure; it can relieve the patient from the need for dialysis.
Results of a scientific study by scientists from the University of California, San Francisco published in Nature Communications on August 29, 2023, this is an important step forward for The Kidney Project.
The researchers say the bioreactor could eliminate the need for people to undergo regular dialysis or the need to take aggressive medications to suppress the immune system after a transplant.
For the first time, scientists have demonstrated how kidney cells placed in an implantable device (a bioreactor) can survive inside a pig’s body and mimic important kidney functions.
The device operates silently in the background, like a pacemaker, and does not trigger the recipient’s immune system to attack. The project is successfully testing a prototype of a bioartificial kidney. More than half a million people in the United States alone undergo dialysis several times a week, and 25,000 kidney transplants are performed annually. At the same time, they are accompanied by heavy drug treatment to ensure that the new kidney is not expelled from the body, that is, rejected by it.
The project is led by UCSF’s Shuvo Roy, Ph.D. (CTO), and William H. Fissell, M.D., of Vanderbilt University. Mr Roy says:
We focused on safely reproducing kidney function. An artificial kidney will make treatment of diseases not only more effective, but also more tolerable and comfortable.
The scientists plan to fill the bioreactor with various kidney cells that perform vital functions such as balancing fluid in the body and releasing hormones to regulate blood pressure, and then combine it with a device that filters waste from the blood.
Scientists are full of optimism, but regrettably state: “The first data are encouraging, but there are months of long-term animal testing remaining before we move on to human trials.”
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