Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco have created a bioreactor device that, with the help of grown human kidney cells, can perform a number of the kidney’s fundamental functions.
After a transplant, the gadget may one day eliminate the need for immunosuppressant medicines or dialysis, say the researchers.
The scientists claimed that the device worked as intended after a week of testing in pigs.
The institution claims that the gadget may operate undetected in the body like a pacemaker and will not cause the immune system of the recipient to launch an attack.
In the future, researchers hope to combine the bioreactor with a device that filters waste out of the blood, effectively simulating the kidney’s filtration and regulation processes.
The goal is to create a device on a human size that can replace a failing organ like the kidney more effectively than dialysis, which is now used to keep patients alive after their kidneys have failed. More than half a million Americans need dialysis on a regular basis. Approximately 20,000 people in the U.S. obtain a kidney transplant annually, despite the high demand. It pointed out that having access to an artificial kidney that could be implanted would be very helpful.
To mimic the function of a transplanted kidney, the scientists designed the bioreactor to have direct access to the body’s circulatory system.
The kidney cells inside the bioreactor are protected from the recipient’s immune cells by silicon membranes.
The group utilised a specialised kidney cell that controls water and salt levels as a test subject; these cells are called proximal tubule cells. The cells had previously been employed to “help dialysis patients in the intensive care unit,” the announcement said, citing the work of co-author H. David Humes, MD of the University of Michigan.
