Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), United States, have developed a device that mimics the functions of a kidney.
The artificial kidney, according to the university, is made up of human kidney cells contained in an implantable device known as a bioreactor.
It was examined for a week in pigs and shown to replicate numerous critical renal functions.
The device can operate silently in the background and does not activate the recipient’s immune system.
Eventually, scientists plan to fill the bioreactor with different renal cells that perform vital functions like balancing the body’s fluids and releasing hormones to regulate blood pressure, then pair it with a device that filters waste from the blood,” the statement reads.
“The aim is to produce a human-scale device to improve on dialysis, which keeps people alive after their kidneys fail but is a poor substitute for having a real working organ.
“The next step will be month-long trials, as required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), first in animals and eventually in humans.”
According to Shuvo Roy, a bioengineering professor at the UCSF School of Pharmacy, the bioartificial device will make renal disease therapy more effective as well as considerably more acceptable and comfortable.
We needed to prove that a functional bioreactor would not require immunosuppressant drugs, and we did. We had no complications and can now iterate up, reaching for the whole panel of kidney functions at the human scale,” he said.
