Advances in kidney regeneration research

Abstract

The treatment for chronic renal failure is kidney transplantation, but there are problems such as a shortage of donors and the need for lifelong administration of immunosuppressive drugs. Regenerative medicine is attracting as a method that can solve these problems. In recent years, it has become possible to induce various renal progenitor cells from pluripotent stem cells, and to construct a kidney with a higher-order structure by combining the induced progenitor cells. In addition, by using the animal embryogenesis, it has also become possible to create a chimeric kidney which have vessels and urinary tracts. Here, we mainly describe the progress and problems of these approaches.