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(108,903 posts)
Mon Apr 15, 2013, 08:50 AM Apr 2013

Kidney grown in lab successfully transplanted into rat

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/apr/14/kidney-grown-lab-transplanted-animal


A kidney in a bioreactor after seeding with cells. After transplantation it filtered blood and produced urine. Photograph: Ott Lab/Center for Regenerative Medicine

Scientists have grown a kidney in a laboratory and shown that it works when implanted into a living animal. The work is an important step towards the longer-term goal of growing personalised replacement organs that could be transplanted into people with kidney failure.

More than 51,000 people are treated every year in the UK for end-stage kidney failure and 90% of those who are on the waiting list for organs are waiting for kidneys. A shortage of organs means that every year fewer than 3,000 transplants are carried out, however, while more than 3,000 people die waiting for a transplant.

There is no cure for kidney failure. The only available treatments – dialysis or receiving a transplant – just buy a patient more time but come with considerable limitations on quality of life. A patient on dialysis is advised to drink less than a litre of fluid per day, for example. And kidney transplants only last between 10 to 15 years on average, in addition to any complications caused by immune rejection.

Finding a new source of replacement organs that could be grown using the patient's own cells and that could last a lifetime would, therefore, be a big leap forward.
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