UF working to grow transplant kidneys from stem cells

Dr. Edward Ross, with the University of Florida College of Medicine's Division of Nephrology, Hypertension and Renal Transplantation, talks about his research Thursday, January 16, 2014. Ross and his team are using pig kidneys as a scaffold or blueprint to someday recreate a human kidney.

In the ground-floor labyrinth that connects UF Health Shands Hospital to the UF health sciences campus, a handful of scientists are super excited about research that one day could mean the end of long waiting lines for kidney transplant patients.

The promise lies in a soft sponge-like structure that is about the size of a bar of soap and is considered a "scaffold" for building healthy human kidneys.

The soap-sized structure is a baby pig's kidney, drained of its blood and cells. Over the course of three days, chemicals strip the kidney of swine cells so it can be injected with human stem cells.

The idea of using stem cells to grow new organs is not new. Scientists have been plugging away at it for two decades, said Dr. Edward Ross, a nephrologist and professor of medicine at UF Health.

"The dream of taking patients' stem cells and growing an organ never came to fruition," Ross said. "Short of growing the organ de novo is (the idea) to somehow nudge the cells along to some sort of biological scaffold from a creature."

Pigs' kidneys are similar to those of humans in size and basic anatomy, so scientists have been studying the concept of using the pig's kidney as a scaffold. They also have experimented with rabbits and rats.

Scientists also have successfully grown human stem cells with other, "easier" organs such as the bladder and trachea, Ross said.

"(The kidney) is one of the most difficult because of the complexity of the organ," he said.

The scaffold is not, however, just an inert skeleton. It contains proteins with chemical signals that guide human stem cells once they are implanted, or "seeded," inside the scaffold. The kidney contains 30 different cell types, so the stem cells can differentiate into these types once inside the scaffold.

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UF working to grow transplant kidneys from stem cells