Post Date April, 15 2023
Scientists at Harvard Stem Cell Research Institute found that mature kidney can repair itself, which shows that mature cells have great plasticity. Scientists found that after kidney injury, mature kidney cells will differentiate into more primitive model cells, and then the cells will differentiate into types of cells that need to be repaired in the damaged area. This finding refutes the previous view that there are scattered stem cells in the kidney to repair damage. The relevant report was published in the recent PNAS magazine.
Dr. Benjamin Humphreys has always suspected the hypothesis of kidney stem cell repair model, so scientists used mice as the model to track mature cells that did not express stem cell markers by genetic markers. The results showed that these fully differentiated cells could not only repair the kidney, but also repair many times.
Dr. Humphreys said that we found that the biomarkers of these mature cells were very interesting. After kidney injury, mature cells also expressed stem cell biomarkers. If mature cells can express biomarkers of "stem cells", they can only be said to be damage markers, not stem cell markers.
Dr. Humphreys explained that we must remember that not every organ must have clear and well-defined stem cells, like the gut and skin. I am not saying that kidney stem cells do not exist, but in an organ with slow cell differentiation process, the stem cell mechanism may not be a good repair mechanism.
Dr. Humphreys plans to use the newly discovered kidney repair mechanism to develop new methods for treating acute kidney injury. We hope to find a drug that can accelerate the process of dedifferentiation of mature kidney cells so that patients can quickly repair their own kidney cells.
