Paving the way for personalized kidney regeneration and drug testing

Dr. Benjamin Freedman and colleagues have, for the first time, successfully grown mini-kidney organoids from pluripotent stem cells. They then used a gene-editing technique to engineer the organoids with genetic changes linked to kidney disease, re-creating kidney disease in a petri dish and paving the way for personalized kidney regeneration and drug testing. 

“These genetically engineered mini-kidneys have taught us that human disease boils down to simple components that can be re-created in a petri dish. This provides us with faster, better ways to perform ‘clinical trials in a dish’ to test drugs and therapies that might work in humans.”

-Dr. Benjamin Freedman

These findings were published in the October 23 issue of Nature Communications.