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ORGANOIDS

Fluid flow enhances vascularization and maturation of kidney organoids

Nature Reviews Nephrology volume 15, page 254 (2019)Cite this article

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Current protocols for the development of kidney organoids generate 3D aggregates containing nephron components. However, vascular development within these organoids is limited, and researchers have relied on animal transplantation to generate perfusable vasculature. A new paper demonstrates that culturing kidney organoids under conditions of flow enhances vascularization and the maturation of nephron components. “Glomerular vascularization is particularly critical for generating blood filtration structures that are necessary for urine production, and we suspected that the lack of vascular incorporation into glomeruli and consequential lack of multilineage crosstalk might be one reason why kidney organoids do not contain morphologically mature podocytes,” say Ryuji Morizane and Navin Gupta. “We show that simply flowing fluid across the surface of kidney organoids on an adherent extracellular matrix dramatically enhances both their vascularization and maturation in vitro without the need for animal implantation,” add Kimberly Homan and Jennifer Lewis.

The researchers believe their vascularized kidney organoids provide a new platform for drug testing and disease modelling. “Our ultimate goal is to design and construct kidney organoid-based devices that enable filtration and reabsorption in vitro,” they say.

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  1. Nature Reviews Nephrology http://www.nature.com/nrneph

    Susan J. Allison

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  1. Susan J. Allison
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Correspondence to Susan J. Allison.

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Allison, S.J. Fluid flow enhances vascularization and maturation of kidney organoids. Nat Rev Nephrol 15, 254 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41581-019-0126-7

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