Progress Toward Kidney Regeneration
August 14, 2012 | Terry Sharrer
With tens of thousands of patients on waiting lists for kidney transplants, success in creating kidneys from pig kidney “scaffolds” and human stem cells is important news—and that is what regenerative medicine researchers at Wake Forest University’s Baptist Medical Center (Winston Salem, NC) have done. Earlier advances in this field have come with tissues that have relatively few kinds of cells in its makeup (skin, bladder, urine tubes, et al), but the kidney is a complex organ with nearly two dozen cell types. The researchers were able to demonstrate that the regenerated kidney was able to maintain blood pressure after being transplanted. MORE
Image Credit: Wikipedia