Lab-Grown Mini Kidneys 'Go Rogue,' Sprout Brain and Muscle Cells
Lab-Grown Mini Kidneys 'Go Rogue,' Sprout Brain and Muscle Cells
By Mindy Weisberger, Senior Writer | November 16, 2018 07:32am ET
Miniature lab-grown kidneys have been hiding something from the scientists who grew them. Instead of developing into different varieties of kidney cells, some of the cells took a different path and became brain and muscle cells.
These simple mini kidneys — also known as kidney organoids — are grown from stem cells that are encouraged to develop into clusters of specific kidney cells. But it turns out that the "recipes" that encourage the development of specialized kidney cells were also cranking out cells from other organs, according to a new study.
The scientists set out to grow kidney organoids in the lab and then analyze them to see what was happening inside of them, on a cellular level. To do that, the researchers looked at data collected from thousands of the organoids' genes, representing more than 83,000 cells in 65 mini kidneys. They expected to see a diverse variety of kidney cells, comparable to what one would see in a normal, fully grown human kidney. But they discovered that 10 percent to 20 percent of the organoids' cells were not kidney cells at all, but brain and muscle cells. [11 Body Parts Grown in the Lab]
Growing a mini kidney takes about four weeks, said study co-author Benjamin Humphreys, chief of the Division of Nephrology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. To grow them, stem cells are bathed in a chemical cocktail that nurtures their growth into a range of kidney cells.
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= new reply since forum marked as read
My kidneys are fine, need Brain and Muscle Cells.
