Can Stem Cells Treat Kidney Disease?

Healthy kidneys filter excess fluids and waste from your body. Kidneys get damaged due to various medical conditions resulting in the accumulation of excess fluid, electrolytes, and waste that can trigger a bad reaction inside the body. Your kidneys have limited regenerative capabilities, so eventually, they get damaged or collapse. You now depend on external dialysis for survival and eventually a kidney transplant. Kidney diseases differ, but 50% of kidney failure is associated with diabetes.

You can check out stem cell therapies available at Stemwell Regenerative Medical Center in Colombia for treating several diseases. Fortunately, stem cell research has revealed some potential in kidney failure treatment. You can discuss it with the doctors at Stemwell.

There is a wide range of clinical studies being conducted on animals using different cell types from bone marrow. Amongst the cell type MSCs or Mesenchymal stem cells have shown promising results. Studies advocate that MSCs have the potential to improve the kidney’s intrinsic ability to repair itself.

Researchers assume that the MSCs derived from bone marrow release proteins, which help kidney cells to develop thus inhibiting cell death and encouraging the stem cells present in the kidney to repair the kidney damage. However, there is still deep research needed to establish the correctness of these assumptions or possibilities. Clinical trials using bone marrow MSCs are in progress to test their effectiveness in kidney disease treatment.

Another cell type used for research is the IPSC or induced Pluripotent stem cells. The adult specialized cells are reprogrammed to act like embryonic stem cells. It means they can develop into any tissue or cell in the body.

An alternative way of organ replacement is under investigation, which can help treat chronic kidney diseases. Organ scaffolds are used to generate an entire transplantable organ. All the cells from an organ are removed, so they are called organ scaffolds. The remaining extracellular matrix supports the shape. The matrix is seeded with the patient’s own cells and nurtured carefully to develop and multiply for scaffold recovery.

Image Credit: https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/human-urinary-system-kidneys-anatomy-gm1210510466-350708043?phrase=Kidney%20Disease

Using a patient’s own cells eliminates the complications of kidney rejection after a transplant. The challenge here is to identify and obtain the right cell types to seed in the scaffold. The kidney is a complicated structure comprising multiple different cells. However, IPSCs can be a helpful candidate for seeding organ scaffolds. Animal experiments have revealed the feasibility of using IPSCs for seeding kidney organ scaffolds.

Stem cell therapy for treating kidney disease is still not developed. The kidney has multiple different cell types, which get affected because of disease. The kidney of the patient will need to be supplied with different cell types to replace damaged cells. Research on cell or organ replacement is still being pursued but is possibly a long-term goal.

Can stem cells treat kidney disease?

Currently, general systemic stem cell therapy is available to handle the issue because scientists still have to separate the specific cells that can repair the kidney. The stem therapy outcome is a reduction in inflammatory indicators in comparison to the pre-treatment level and there is a marginal increase in kidney function. The hope of dialysis frequency is reduced but it is still not a solution for eliminating transplant surgery.