Could patients' own kidney cells cure kidney disease? Reprogrammed kidney cells could make transplants and dialysis things of the past

In the first study, Sharon Ricardo, PhD (Monash University, in Clayton, Australia) and her colleagues 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, Miguel Esteban, MD, PhD (Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Guangzhou, China) and his colleagues 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.

In an accompanying editorial, Ian Rogers, PhD (Mount Sinai Hospital, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada) noted that "together, these two articles demonstrate the feasibility of using kidney cells as a source of iPSCs, and efficient production of adult iPSCs from urine means that cells can be collected at any time."

Just as exciting, the ease of collection and high frequency of reprogramming described in these articles may help improve future therapies in many other areas of medicine.

Dr. Ricardo's co-authors include Bi Song, Jonathan Niclis, Maliha Alikhan, Samy Sakkal, Aude Sylvain, Andrew Laslett, Claude Bernard (Monash University, in Clayton, Australia); and Peter Kerr, (Monash Medical Centre, Australia, in Clayton, Australia).

Dr. Esteban's co-authors include Ting Zhou, Christina Benda, Yinghua Huang, Xingyan Li, Yanhua Li, Xiangpeng Guo, Guokun Cao, Shen Chen, Duanqing Pei (Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Guangzhou, China); Sarah Duzinger (University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences); Lili Hao, Jiayan Wu (Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China); Yau-Chi Chan, Kwong-Man Ng, Jenny Cy Ho, Hung-Fat Tse (University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, in Hong Kong, HKSAR, China); Matthias Wieser (University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences and Austrian Center for Industrial Biotechnology (ACIB), in Vienna, Austria); Heinz Redl (Austrian Cluster for Tissue Regeneration, Vienna, Austria); and Johannes Grillari, Regina Grillari-Voglauer ( University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences and Evercyte GmbH, in Vienna, Austria).