One problem Freedman and others hope to address, ultimately, is the persistent, deep deficit of available donor organs. Upward of 100,000 people are on the national kidney transplant waiting list and around 14% of American adults have chronic kidney disease — a trend that’s worsening.
Researchers in this field first must identify the strategy that holds the most promise for tissue generation, he said.
“The results so far support the idea of essentially injecting stem cells into a body and having them take form and make connections to create kidney tissues in the body,” Freedman said.
There, stem cells have access to blood vessels that provide greater nourishment than what they would receive outside of the body. This gives the cells the opportunity to develop “chimeric” tissue that is part…