The Kidney Crisis: Can Lab-Grown Organs Save Lives?

When we think of vital organs in the body, the heart and brain come to mind. What about the kidneys? They're the ones who filter our blood, regulate blood pressure, and balance fluid levels  for muscle movement and heart function. Unsung Heroes is what I like to call the kidneys. We’re going to discover whether lab-grown kidneys and organ printing can solve the kidney shortage crisis, but first let’s do a deep dive on what kidneys really are.

Kidneys Information:

As a baby, you come with two kidneys. Kidneys are two reddish-brown bean-shaped organs sitting just below your rib cage and behind your belly. One sits either side of your spine and is a complex organ, ensuring we stay healthy. Parts of the kidney include: Kidney capsule, Renal artery, renal cortex, renal medulla, renal papilla, renal pelvis, and renal vein. 

Kidney Capsule: This part of the kidney consists of three layers of connective tissue covering your kidneys, helping protect kidneys from injury. It acts like a shield to guard the kidney against injury or infection.

Renal Artery: This is a large blood vessel that supplies oxygen-rich blood to the kidneys from the heart.

Renal Cortex: Being the outer layer of the kidneys, the renal cortex also creates the hormone erythropoietin (EPO), which helps make red blood cells.

Renal Medulla: Located deeper inside the kidney, this area contains renal tubules, which help move urine toward the center of the kidney.

Renal Papilla: These pyramid-shaped structures act like tiny funnels, guiding the urine from the medulla into the central collecting area.

Renal Pelvis: This is a funnel-shaped structure that collects urine and passes it down to the two ureters, which carry it to the bladder.

Renal Vein: After the kidney filters the blood, this vein carries the cleaned blood back toward the heart. Each kidney has its own renal vein.

Now that we understand how complex and important the kidneys are, it’s easier to see why losing their function can be life-threatening. When kidneys fail, the body can no longer filter waste or regulate fluids, which is where kidney transplants come in.

According to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), over 90,000 people in the U.S. are currently waiting for a kidney transplant each year and THOUSANDS die each year waiting for one. 

Because of this crisis, lab-grown and artificial kidneys come into play. Scientists are now exploring ways to grow functional kidney tissue with the use of stem cells, biodegradable scaffolds and xenotransplantation (use of non-human cells, tissues to treat medical conditions in humans.) 

In fact, researchers have managed to grow early-stage kidneys inside pig embryos which has never been done before. By using specially prepared human stem cells, scientists from China inserted them into genetically modified pig embryos that were unable to grow kidneys. After doing this, they grew kidneys and up to 65% of the cells were human. This kind of innovation could be a game-changer for kidney transplants. If scientists can grow a patient’s own kidney using their stem cells, it could greatly reduce the risk of the body’s immune system attacking the new kidney, one of the biggest challenges in transplantation today. 

Hold on though. We’re not there yet. These kidneys were only temporary, early-stage organs, not the fully functional adult kidneys needed for real-life transplants. Since pig cells could still trigger immune reactions, scientists also want to increase the number of human cells in the organs. One of the most important concerns include ethics. Since human cells can spread in embryos, scientists need to be cautious about the possibility of those cells reaching the animal’s brain or reproductive organs.  Even with these challenges, scientists remain hopeful. With further advanced research, they believe that fully transplantable, lab-grown human kidneys could become a reality,  possibly within the next decade.

Citations:

Piller, C. (2023, September 7). Human kidney tissue grown in pigs for first time. Science. https://www.science.org/content/article/human-kidney-tissue-grown-pigs-first-time

United Network for Organ Sharing. (2024). Data – Organ Donation and Transplant Statistics. UNOS. https://unos.org/data/

Cleveland Clinic. (2023). Kidney. Cleveland Clinic Health Library. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/21824-kidney