A Simple Bioreactor-Based Method to Generate Kidney Organoids from Pluripotent Stem Cells

Area of Science:

• Stem cell biology
• Developmental biology
• Regenerative medicine

Background:

• Pluripotent stem cell-derived kidney organoids offer a promising model for studying kidney development and disease.
• Existing protocols are often complex, expensive, and lack reproducibility, limiting their widespread use.
• There is a need for scalable, cost-effective methods to generate kidney organoids.

Purpose of the Study:

• To establish a simple, inexpensive, and robust method for bulk generation of kidney organoids from human induced pluripotent stem cells.
• To characterize the developmental timeline and morphology of the generated kidney organoids.
• To validate the utility of the organoids for studying renal developmental biology.

Main Methods:

• Human induced pluripotent stem cells were differentiated into kidney organoids using a novel protocol.
• Organoid development was monitored for tubular structure formation and tissue morphology.
• Gene deletion studies (HNF1B) were performed to assess the system's capacity for disease modeling.

Main Results:

• The developed protocol successfully generated kidney organoids in bulk.
• Organoids exhibited tubular structures by day 8 and optimal morphology by day 14.
• Day-14 organoids closely resembled late capillary loop stage nephrons, and HNF1B deletion impaired tubulogenesis.

Conclusions:

• This protocol provides a fast, efficient, and cost-effective method for generating large quantities of human kidney organoids.
• The generated organoids serve as a valuable model for studying normal and aberrant kidney development.
• This advancement facilitates research into kidney diseases and developmental biology.