Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, have created a device that could employ the human kidney cell in the lab and mimic some of its key functions, capable of eliminating the depressing kidney transplant and dialysis being undertaken in humans.
Sufferers of kidney diseases are often put through dialysis and transplant in some cases with high financial cost and in some cases poor results.
With an increasing number of sufferers on the waiting list, there have been concerted efforts to deepen research and bypass the strenuous existing management of one of the most vital organs of the human body.
To achieve this lofty feat, scientists at the University of California have advanced their research revealing via a statement on its website that the artificial kidney otherwise known as a bioreactor device could one day eliminate the necessity for dialysis or the need for harsh medicines to suppress the immune system following a transplant.
The device has been successfully tested in pigs for a week, according to the experts, with no evident side effects or concerns, adding that, “The next step will be month-long trials, as required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), first in animals and eventually in humans.
The Kidney Project which is jointly headed by UCSF’s Shuyo Roy, PhD (technical director) and Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s William H. Fissell, MD (medical director), said the device can work silently in the background, like a pacemaker, and does not activate the recipient’s immune system to go on the attack.
Shuyo Roy, a Bioengineering Professor at the UCSF School of Pharmacy, said they are focused on safely replicating the key functions of a kidney.
The bioartificial kidney will make treatment for kidney disease more effective and also much more tolerable and comfortable, the creators have said.
“We needed to prove that a functional bioreactor will not require immunosuppressant drugs, and we did.
“We had no complications and can now iterate up, reaching for the whole panel of kidney functions at the human scale,” he noted
The statement read partly “Eventually, scientists plan to fill the bioreactor with different kidney cells that perform vital functions like balancing the body’s fluids and releasing hormones to regulate blood pressure – then pair it with a device that filters waste from the blood.
“The aim is to produce a human-scale device to improve on dialysis, which keeps people alive after their kidneys fail but is a poor substitute for having a real working organ.
“More than 500,000 people in the U.S. require dialysis several times a week. Many seek kidney transplants, but there are not enough donors, and only about 20,000 people receive them each year. An implantable artificial kidney would be a boon.”