Japan Team Treats Chronic Kidney Disease with iPS Cells in Mice

   Kyoto, April 23 (Jiji Press)--A research team led by Kyoto University said Wednesday it has successfully prevented kidney functions from declining in mice using human induced pluripotent stem cells, or human iPS cells, an achievement that may lead to the development of an effective therapy for chronic kidney disease.
   Kenji Osafune, professor at the university's Center for iPS Cell Research and Application, and colleagues are looking to conduct clinical trials two years later on patients who developed symptoms of the disease after kidney transplantation and on nontransplant patients within several years.
   Currently, it is estimated that there are about 20 million chronic kidney disease patients in Japan, with some 40,000 patients starting dialysis each year. Meanwhile, only about 2,000 patients can receive new kidneys annually due to a dearth of donors.
   Under these circumstances, regenerative medicine employing iPS cells, which theoretically can differentiate into almost all types of cells, has been attracting attention.
   The researchers established a culture medium enabling more than 100-fold proliferation of nephron progenitor cells derived from human iPS cells compared with conventional methods and transplanted the mass-cultured cells into mice chemically induced to suffer chronic kidney disease.

(2025/04/23-15:39)

To read a full story, please click here to find out how to subscribe.