“We assembled kidney organoids with vascular organoids. To carry out this process successfully, it is essential to identify the ideal time to join them, taking into account the developmental stage of each organoid.”
-Núria Montserrat Pulido, ICREA Research, Study Lead
The Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) in Spain has generated mini-kidneys from pig or human tissue through stem cells that selectively mimics some of the characteristics like that of a human kidney. By combining the 3D kidney organoids with the endothelial organoids, they are able to create ‘assembloids’. Organoids comprises of 3D structures that are grown in-vitro. It can mimic organ function and holds a lot of promise as a convenient tool for modelling of disease and screening of drugs. These minuscule organs lack nervous, immune or vascular systems.
Creating a kidney out of the laboratory has been very challenging for scientists for over a decade. The team has now published a paper in the journal Advanced Materials, providing a detailed description of their work. Núria Montserrat Pulido adds, “When these two types of organoids are together, they start a process of interaction in just three hours. The result of the process is just truly spectacular.”The key of this study is to find information about vascular dysfunction in humans and how it can be applied in organoid transplantation. Their findings provide an understanding into the development of renal organoids.
Elena Garreta Bahima, Researcher in the Montserrat Group, First Author of the Study say, “We need to have this vascular system in our organoids if we want to model systemic pathologies that affect the kidney through the bloodstream, such as an autoimmune disease or diabetes, for example. We also believe that the approach we have used in this study could also be applied to other organoid models.”In their previous studies, the team noticed that the kidney organoids that were created had a vascular component of endothelial cells that would later form blood vessels. With the help of pig or human tissue, they created 3D printing ink from biocompatible hydrogel.
The hydrogel is of collagen I protein, one of the most abundant of all proteins in the extracellular matrix of kidney tissue. They have collaborated with other scientists to reach to the results-National Platform of Biomodels and Biobanks of the Carlos III Institute of Health (PISCII-BB). IBEC manages more than 500,000 biological samples and clinical data.
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