Polycystic Kidney Disease In Vitro Center

Polycystic kidney disease (PKD) is a common genetic disease in which balloon-like structures arise from tiny tubes in the kidneys and other organs, with very limited treatment options and no cure, and which has resisted elucidation at the molecular level using conventional experimental approaches.

Researchers have made an important, research-enabling discovery by demonstrating that human mini-kidney structures grown in a petri dish can exhibit symptoms of polycystic kidney disease (‘PKD in a dish’), but currently this technology is difficult for many investigators to access and differs in certain respects from PKD in a living person.

Our team of world leaders in this area aim to solve these challenges by establishing a core center dedicated to the development of PKD organoids and related in-a-dish technologies, which will greatly enable the community to use the technology to make research breakthroughs in our understanding of how PKD actually works and how it might be treated in a curative fashion.

The center will be the first of its kind on the West Coast in 30 years of NIH programmatic funding.