Researchers have developed stem cells from kidney tissue. Shown here is a developing kidney with glomeruli (red) and the connecting branches (green).
Credit: Sharon Ricardo, Monash Immunology and Stem Cell lab
MELBOURNE: With their wizardly power to conjure up any type of body tissue, embryonic stem cells promise spare parts for ailing bodies. But it turns out that some cell types are easier to produce than others.
Making brain or retina cells, for instance, has been fairly straightforward. Not so for kidney cells: the route to making them seems obstructed by twists and turns.
That's been frustrating for kidney researchers trying to generate replacement cells for the tens of thousands of patients who suffer terminal kidney failure each year.
Now researchers at Monash Immunology and Stem Cell laboratories at Melbourne's Monash University, say they have found a detour which may shorten the path to producing kidney cells.
Winding back the clock
Instead of starting with embryonic stem cells derived from surplus human embryos, they started with mature human kidney cells and wound back their developmental clock to a more embryonic state.
These cells, known as induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS cells have similar properties to embryonic stem cells - they multiply without limits and produce different types of cells.
But the researchers are hoping they will also retain a memory of their origins and find their own way back on the convoluted route to becoming kidney cells.
"We think these kidney iPS cells will be better at making kidney tissue," says Sharon Ricardo, one of the authors of the paper which was published in this month's issue of the Journal of the American Society for Nephrology.
Tailor-made cells
When Japanese researchers first reported making iPS cells from human skin cells in 2007, it seemed like an answer to researchers' prayers. Generating embryonic stem cells from spare embryos is not only technically difficult, researchers faced huge resistance from powerful groups to stymie the research.
By contrast, the iPS cell method produced cells that seemed to have the same power as embryonic stem cells but was a lot easier - it just required ferrying four new genes into a skin cell via a retrovirus.
And no embryos were involved so no-one had to fret about whether souls were being destroyed. Another great advantage was that since iPS cells were made from a person's skin cells, they could be tailor-made for a patient, eliminating concerns of tissue rejection.
By contrast, stem cells from a donated embryo would have a different tissue type to the patient that received them - so just like any organ transplant, tissue-matching and anti-rejection drugs would be needed.
