The kidney from the stem cells will fill the deficit of donor organs
Last reviewed: 30.05.2018
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In the world, widespread kidney disease, which require organ transplantation. To date, only in the UK, more than 6,000 people are waiting for a kidney transplant, but donor organs are not enough for all patients in need of transplantation and every year less than 3,000 such operations are performed, which causes the death of many people. In addition, high costs and a perceived shortage of donor bodies have caused the emergence of a criminal market for donor agencies.
In Tokyo, experts have developed a new unique technique that will save thousands of lives. Experts hope that in the near future the technique of transplanting organ-grown organs can be adapted for humans.
Two years ago, scientists have already conducted experiments to transplant an artificially grown kidney to a rat, despite the fact that the organ is well established, the kidney functioned insufficiently. The organ did not cope with the urinary diversion function, which increased the internal pressure to peak values, resulting in the death of the rat.
But the Japanese biologists have continued to work in this direction and now the artificially grown kidneys that they have transplanted are not only well established in the body of experimental animals, but they provided a normal process of urination.
During the work they decided to change the approach to the transplantation process a little. Earlier deducing kidney tubules were combined with a system of drainage of urine in the body, but Professor Takashi Yokoi and his colleagues used to transplant not only artificial kidney, but also artificial bladder is connected to the body of the ureter tube and has the whole complex was transplanted into an animal. As a result of this approach, the process of excretion of urine occurs according to the following principle: urine first entered into a transplanted urinary, afterwards into its own, and only after that it was excreted from the body.
The animals felt well after 2 months after transplantation and there were no abnormalities of urine diversion. After successful experiments with rats, experts decided to conduct an experiment involving larger animals - pigs.
As a result, the transplanted kidney and bladder are well established in the animals and provide a normal urinary function.
Now experts are at a loss to answer whether it is possible to use this method in public. But the results of the work allow you to more accurately learn about the principles of isolation in artificially grown organs, and, undoubtedly, the work of Japanese biologists will give a great experience to all specialists in the field of transplantology.
Today, in different centers around the world, scientists conduct trial experiments with human organs grown from stem cells. But while scientists can grow only small copies of real organs, for example, already appeared in the laboratory contracting muscles, a brain measuring only a few millimeters, microscopic areas of the stomach tissue and heart size of 0.5 mm, which can be beat.