Australian scientists create stem cells from kidneys

Australian scientists create stem cells from kidneys
Meredith Griffiths reported this story on Tuesday, May 17, 2011 18:24:00

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MARK COLVIN: There's hope that new treatments could be on the way for the ever-growing number of Australians with kidney disease. More than 11 per cent of all deaths in Australia are associated with kidney failure. An ageing population and changes in diet and exercise mean the numbers going onto dialysis are increasing by 6 per cent a year.

Now for the first time Australian scientists have been able to create stem cells from adult kidney cells. They say this will give medical researchers an essentially unlimited supply of kidney cells to screen for new drugs and potentially new cellular therapies.

Meredith Griffiths reports.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: When someone's kidneys stop working, they're left with no options but a transplant or dependence on dialysis. And associate professor Sharon Ricardo says that's a problem that's becoming more common.

SHARON RICARDO: The incidence is rising and alarmingly it's between 6 to 8 per cent per annum, to the fact now where one in three people are at risk of developing chronic kidney disease and five Australians commence dialysis or receive a transplant every day.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Dr Ricardo is the renal regeneration group leader at Monash University and she's part of a team that's just managed to create induced pluripotent stem cells from human kidney cells for the first time.

They took kidney cells from an adult and reprogrammed them back to an embryo-like state so now they can be changed into any cell type in the body.

SHARON RICARDO: Previously IPS cells have really been generated mainly from skin and we believe that kidney derived IPS cells are more likely to produce kidney cells.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Dr Ricardo says it will be extremely valuable for medical scientists to have access to what she calls off the shelf kidney cells.

SHARON RICARDO: So as the kidney IPS stem cells can divide indefinitely in the culture dish we can make a limitless source of these cells made from patients with genetic kidney disease, we can do disease modelling in the culture dish and actually better understand how genetic kidney disorders develop in the first place.

Ultimately it's really hoped that IPS cells may one day provide a source of replacement cells for these patients.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: One of her partners in the research was Dr Andrew Laslett from the CSIRO.

Kidneys are complicated and unlike livers they don't repair themselves, so Dr Laslett says it's exciting to be able to use stem cell technology on kidneys.

ANDREW LASLETT: Stem cell scientists have shied away from doing a lot of work with the kidney because it's a complicated organ made up of at least 26 different cell types. So I think this is really important in providing a platform from which both us and many other groups hopefully will start looking more at different ways to treat kidney disease.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Dr Laslett cautions that induced pluripotent stem cells still haven't been shown to be safe for transplantation into humans. But he says they could be very useful for screening drugs.

ANDREW LASLETT: There's real potential of economies of scale using these types of technology. That if you've got an unlimited supply of cells, if you have a rock solid method of making these cells, of turning them into the cell types that you want and you have a reproducible off the shelf product, that's when big pharmaceutical companies really start to become interested and potentially governments involvement through funding to really move the field forward.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: The breakthrough has been welcomed by Brian Myerson from the group ShareLife which advocates for organ donation. He says the latest data shows 1,100 Australians on the waiting list for a kidney and more than 10,000 on dialysis.

BRIAN MYERSON: Well unfortunately there's a terrible shortage of donated organs, people are dying on the waiting list waiting. And some people aren't even put on the waiting list because the doctors don't even believe that the patients have any chance of receiving an organ.

So therefore if there's any way, medical science way, of increasing the number of people who can benefit from a transplant will have amazing implications on the lives of so many people.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: But Dr Timothy Mathew from Kidney Health Australia is warning people not to get their hopes up just yet.

TIMOTHY MATHEW: I think if I was with kidney disease I'd sort of note this with a quiet tick, say this is good news but we're a long way from translating this into any meaningful therapy which might for instance stop polycystic kidney disease developing or other genetic diseases developing.

Nevertheless it's a sign of encouragement that we should continue down this pathway for it's only I think through this direction that we are going to ultimately get some of the real answers.

MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: The research has been published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

MARK COLVIN: Meredith Griffiths.