Stem Cells May Help Heal Diseased Kidneys

Stem cells derived from a fatty fold of tissue within a patient’s own abdomen could be used to preserve and possibly improve kidney function when fused to the kidneys, according to new research in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

Researchers found that kidney function improved in rats with chronic kidney disease when the diseased kidney was fused with the omentum, a fatty fold of tissue in the abdomen that is a rich source of stem cells.

Traditionally found in bone marrow or fat derived from adults, mesenchymal stem cells have long held the promise of treating incurable diseases but it has been difficult to confirm this theory.

“This study represents the proof-of-principle that mesenchymal stem cells, if allowed to stay in the affected kidney (or any other organ) for a prolonged time period, could cure chronic kidney disease (or other organ diseases),” says study author Ashok Singh, PhD, of the John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County in Chicago. “One of the most significant findings from this research is that chronic kidney disease could be treated successfully, and even possibly reversed, with mesenchymal stem cell treatment.”
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He and his colleagues connected the omentum to a subtotally nephrectomized kidney in rats with chronic kidney disease. After 12 weeks, the rats showed improved kidney function and their kidney extracts showed increases in expression levels of growth factors involved in renal repair.

“As of now, the technique as described in the paper could only be applied in a very limited number of patients who have chronic kidney disease and are undergoing partial resection of the kidney because of tumor removal,” Singh says. “In this situation, it would be possible for deliberately bringing the omentum in contact with the kidney. The improvement in the human kidney would be expected as in rats because human omentum, like the rat omentum, has been shown to improve healing of ischemic heart disease and injured spinal cords and fractures.”

The researchers believe the omentum worked in three ways:

• fused with the kidney to form a continuum of tissue.

• conveyed a mix of paracrine tissue growth factors to the affected kidney.

• provided a reservoir of mesenchymal stem cells in direct contact with the diseased kidney to maintain a high level of the paracrine factors near the kidney.

“The treatment landscape could be dramatically altered after this study because there will now be an intensive effort to design technologies to 1) target stem cells to the diseased kidney and 2) to prolong the life of injected stem cells in that location,” Singh says.

He and his colleagues are currently evaluating the elaborated factors secreted by mesenchymal stem cells to treat chronic kidney disease. “If successful, there may not be a need to inject live stem cells but rather inject the ‘healing proteins’ from stem cells without live stem cells, which could do the job as well,” Singh says. “The technology will then take a quantum leap from the present—live stem cell treatments, which presently are expensive and complicated, will be replaced by simple off-the-shelf injections like having penicillin shots. I firmly believe this is possible in the near future.”  

—Colleen Mullarkey

Reference

Garcia-Gomez I, Pancholi N, Patel J, Gudehithlu KP, Sethupathi P, Hart P, et al. Activated omentum slows progression of chronic kidney disease. J Am Soc Nephrol. March 13, 2014. [Epub ahead of print.] doi: 10.1681/ASN.2013040387.