Potential Therapeutic Strategies of Regenerative Medicine for Renal Failure

Kidney diseases are a public health problem worldwide. Available therapies include function replacement by dialysis or transplant, which are associated with a high morbidity and mortality. Likewise, none of these treatments compensate all kidney functions. There is a great concern in developing more effective therapies with the ability to replace the wide range of renal functions, so that, new studies on developing therapeutic strategies have focused on regenerative medicine.

The aim of this paper is to review the new advances in regenerative medicine for renal failure treatment.

Regenerative medicine comprises two therapeutic strategies: cell therapy and tissue engineering. Cell therapy techniques depend on cell and tissue cultures, with the aim to replace morphological structures, tissues, and functions. The main strategic strength of cell therapy in renal failure is the incorporation of additional cells in a damaged kidney, for which purpose different kind of Stem Cells (SCs) have been used such as Embryonic SCs, induced Pluripotent SCs, Multipotent SCs, Renal SCs, or drugs that increase survival and mobilization of SCs. Tissue engineering complements cell therapy combining techniques of biological sciences and engineering to create structures and devices as scaffolds, matrices or 3D biocompatible materials.

Even though there is a significant advance in regenerative medicine strategies, we are far from using any of its techniques on health institutions, due to it is necessary to evaluate side effects, biodistribution, dosage, type of administration, vehicle of cell therapy, as well as the evaluation of response time and long-term studies, among other studies.