Working on Kidney Regeneration
VIa EurekAlert!: "Approximately 60 million people across the globe have chronic kidney disease, and many will need dialysis or a transplant. [Research] indicates that patients' own kidney cells can be gathered and reprogrammed. Reprogramming patients' kidney cells could mean that in the future, fewer patients with kidney disease would require complicated, expensive procedures that affect their quality of life. In the first study, [researchers] took cells from an individual's kidney and coaxed them to become progenitor cells, allowing the immature cells to form any type in the kidney. Specifically, they inserted several key reprogramming genes into the renal cells that made them capable of forming other cells. In a second study, [researchers] found that kidney cells collected from a patient's urine can also be reprogrammed in this way. Using cells from urine allows a technology easy to implement in a clinic setting. Even better, the urine cells could be frozen and later thawed before they were manipulated. If researchers can expand the reprogrammed cells - called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) - and return them to the patient, these IPSCs may restore the health and vitality of the kidneys. In addition to providing a potentially curative therapy for patients, the breakthroughs might also help investigators to study the causes of kidney disease and to screen new drugs that could be used to treat them."
Link: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-07/ason-cpo072711.php
My mom's both the kidneys got shrunk so she was on peritoneal dialysis for 3 yrs, when she got an infection. And since then she is on hemodialysis. All I want to know, where, how and who should I approach to get her kidneys regenerated.
It'll be some years before this end results of this sort of early stage work becomes widely available in the clinic, even outside the US via medical tourism. You might look at researching participation in trials before then:
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2004/11/researching-therapies-and-participation-in-trials.php
Hi Kanika
In Bangalore there is the Bone Marrow Stem cell being given for regnerating kidneys. I dont know the hospital where ,but if you try hard to reseach, you will find it. They have shown reasonable success in removing patients out of dialysis.
Best of luck.
Keep working on this. I sought regeneration before I got a transplant. The transplant has been totally successful, but I would have liked to have grown a new kidney or regenerated/restored the old one. Make it happen!