The kidneys have the capacity to regenerate themselves through the stem cell

Adult kidneys constantly grow, remodel themselves, study finds It was thought that kidney cells didn’t reproduce much once the organ was fully formed, but new research shows that the kidneys are regenerating and repairing themselves throughout life.

It has long been thought that kidney cells didn’t reproduce much once the organ was fully formed. The new research shows that the kidneys are regenerating and repairing themselves throughout life.

“This research tells us that the kidney is in no way a static organ,” said Benjamin Dekel, MD, PhD, a senior author of the paper and associate professor of pediatrics at Sackler, as well as head of the Pediatric Stem Cell Research Institute at the Sheba Medical Center in Israel.

“The kidney, incredibly, rejuvenates itself and continues to generate specialized kidney cells all the time.”

Irving Weissman, MD, professor of pathology and of developmental biology and director of the Stanford institute, is the other senior author.

The research, which was done in mice, also shows how the kidney regenerates itself. Instead of a single type of kidney stem cell that can replace any lost or damaged kidney tissue, slightly more specialized stem cells that reside in different segments of the kidney give rise to new cells within each type of kidney tissue.

“These are basic findings that have direct implications for kidney disease and kidney regeneration,” said Yuval Rinkevich, PhD, the lead author of the paper and a postdoctoral scholar at the institute.

Researchers at the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine and the Sackler School of Medicine in Israel have shown how the kidneys constantly grow and have surprising ability to regenerate themselves, overturning decades of accepted wisdom that such regeneration didn’t happen. It also opens a path toward new ways of repairing and even growing kidneys.

 Source: The findings were published online May 15 in Cell Reports.