Hope for kidney dialysis patients

[apopnj01]

wonderfulengineering.com/th...

[steve680]

Thanks, but this is old news. The artificial kidney rote has been going on at UCSF for at least ten years and they're not yet in clinical trials. It could be a long time until they have something that's FDA approved. But yeah, we all hope there is a better alternative to dialysis in the near future. The main reason things aren't happening faster is a lack of funding. I don't understand why the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative is not investing heavily in stem cell research since they (CZI) are supposedly trying to eliminate all diseases...

[KidneyCoach NKF Ambassador]

This article is more than 2 years old. They had hoped to go into human clinical trials in 2017 but still waiting. It will be another treatment but not all those on dialysis will be able to use this.

Back in. 2003 my nephrologist kept telling everyone growing new kidneys would be available in 2-3 years. Here we are 17 years later and not much closer.

I hope by the time my children or grandchildren need RRT it will be available.

Blessings

[Alport67]

Here's an updated press release from November, 2019. Looks like they are getting closer to human CT sciencedaily.com/releases/2...

[apopnj01 in reply to Alport67]

Fantastic - there may be hope soon enough - I pray that it goes mainstream

[steve680 in reply to Alport67]

It sounds like they still have a long way to go to even getting to clinical trials in humans:

The researchers now aim to scale up the prototype bioreactor to contain more cells in order to test whether the implanted device can supplement kidney function in animals with kidney failure, with the ultimate goal of eventually moving the device to human safety trials.

"Advancing a complex cell therapy like this into the clinic will not be a trivial task -- for instance, it will require substantial investments in cell production and characterization in controlled GMP facilities to avoid any possibility of contamination," Roy said. "Now we've confirmed that we're on the right track to move forward with these efforts."