scholarly journals A simple bioreactor-based method to generate kidney organoids from pluripotent stem cells

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aneta Przepiorski ◽  
Veronika Sander ◽  
Tracy Tran ◽  
Jennifer A. Hollywood ◽  
Brie Sorrenson ◽  
...  

SummaryKidney organoids generated from human pluripotent stem cells have the potential to revolutionize how kidney development and injury are studied. Current protocols are technically complex and suffer from poor reproducibility and high reagent costs restricting scalability. To overcome these issues, we have established a simple, inexpensive and robust method to grow kidney organoids in bulk from human induced pluripotent stem cells. Our organoids develop tubular structures by day (d) 8 and show optimal tissue morphology at d14. A comparison with fetal human kidney suggests that d14 organoid renal structures most closely resemble ‘capillary loop’ stage nephrons. We show that deletion of HNF1B, a transcription factor linked to congenital kidney defects, interferes with tubulogenesis, validating our experimental system for studying renal developmental biology. Taken together, our protocol provides a fast, efficient and cost-effective method for generating large quantities of human fetal kidney tissue, enabling the study of normal and aberrant human renal development.

Author(s):  
Jin Wook Hwang ◽  
Christophe Desterke ◽  
Julien Loisel-Duwattez ◽  
Frank Griscelli ◽  
Annelise Bennaceur-Griscelli ◽  
...  

BackgroundIn mammalians, hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) arise in the dorsal aorta from the hemogenic endothelium, followed by their migration to the fetal liver and to the bone marrow. In zebrafish, the kidney is the site of primary hematopoiesis. In humans, the presence of HSCs in the fetal or adult kidney has not been established.MethodsWe analyzed the presence of HSC markers in the human fetal kidneys by analysis of single-cell datasets. We then analyzed in kidney organoids derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) the presence of hematopoietic markers using transcriptome analyses.ResultsTwelve clusters were identified as stromal, endothelial, and nephron cell type-specific markers in the two fetal stage (17 weeks) kidney datasets. Among these, the expression of hematopoietic cells in cluster 9 showed an expression of primitive markers. Moreover, whole transcriptome analysis of our iPSC-derived kidney organoids revealed induction of the primitive hematopoietic transcription factor RUNX1 as found in the human fetal kidney cortex.ConclusionThese finding support the presence of cells expressing HSC transcriptome in the human kidney. The mechanisms of the appearance of the cells with the same transcriptional features during iPSC-derived kidney organoid generation require further investigation.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loes E. Wiersma ◽  
M. Cristina Avramut ◽  
Ellen Lievers ◽  
Ton J. Rabelink ◽  
Cathelijne W van den Berg

Abstract Background The generation of human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) has opened a world of opportunities for stem cell-based therapies in regenerative medicine. Currently, several human kidney organoid protocols are available that generate organoids containing kidney structures. However, these kidney organoids are relatively small ranging up to 0.13 cm2 and therefore contain a small number of nephrons compared to an adult kidney, thus defying the exploration of future use for therapy. Method We have developed a scalable, easily accessible, and reproducible to increase the size of the organoid up to a nephron sheet of 2.5 cm2 up to a maximum of 12.6 cm2 containing a magnitude of nephrons. Results Confocal microscopy showed that the subunits of the nephrons remain evenly distributed throughout the entire sheet and that these tissue sheets can attain ~30,000-40,000 glomerular structures. Upon transplantation in immunodeficient mice, such nephron sheets became vascularized and matured. They also show reuptake of injected low-molecular mass dextran molecules in the tubular structures, indicative of glomerular filtration. Furthermore, we developed a protocol for the cryopreservation of intermediate mesoderm cells during the differentiation and demonstrate that these cells can be successfully thawed and recovered to create such tissue sheets. Conclusion The scalability of the procedures, and the ability to cryopreserve the cells during differentiation are important steps forward in the translation of these differentiation protocols to future clinical applications such as transplantable auxiliary kidney tissue.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 550-556 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haojia Wu ◽  
Benjamin D. Humphreys

Methods to differentiate human pluripotent stem cells into kidney organoids were first introduced about 5 years ago, and since that time, the field has grown substantially. Protocols are producing increasingly complex three-dimensional structures, have been used to model human kidney disease, and have been adapted for high-throughput screening. Over this same time frame, technologies for massively parallel, single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) have matured. Now, both of these powerful approaches are being combined to better understand how kidney organoids can be applied to the understanding of kidney development and disease. There are several reasons why this is a synergistic combination. Kidney organoids are complicated and contain many different cell types of variable maturity. scRNA-seq is an unbiased technology that can comprehensively categorize cell types, making it ideally suited to catalog all cell types present in organoids. These same characteristics also make scRNA-seq a powerful approach for quantitative comparisons between protocols, batches, and pluripotent cell lines as it becomes clear that reproducibility and quality can vary across all three variables. Lineage trajectories can be reconstructed using scRNA-seq data, enabling the rational adjustment of differentiation strategies to promote maturation of desired kidney cell types or inhibit differentiation of undesired off-target cell types. Here, we review the ways that scRNA-seq has been successfully applied in the organoid field and predict future applications for this powerful technique. We also review other developing single-cell technologies and discuss how they may be combined, using “multiomic” approaches, to improve our understanding of kidney organoid differentiation and usefulness in modeling development, disease, and toxicity testing.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jin Wook Hwang ◽  
Christophe Desterke ◽  
Julien Loisel-Duwattez ◽  
Frank Griscelli ◽  
Annelise Bennaceur-Griscelli ◽  
...  

AbstractBackgroundIn mammalians, hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) arise in the dorsal aorta from the hemogenic endothelium, followed by their migration to fetal liver and to bone marrow. In zebrafish, kidney is the site of primary hematopoiesis. In humans, the presence of HSC in the fetal or adult kidney has not been established.MethodsWe analyzed the presence of HSC markers in human fetal kidneys by analysis of single-cell datasets. We then analyzed in kidney organoids derived from iPSC, the presence of hematopoietic markers using transcriptome analyses.Results12 clusters were identified of stromal, endothelial, and nephron cell type-specific markers in the two fetal stage (17 weeks) kidney datasets. Among these, expression of hematopoietic cells in Cluster 9 showed expression of primitive markers. Moreover, whole transcriptome analysis of our iPSC-derived kidney organoids revealed induction of the primitive hematopoietic transcription factor RUNX1 as found in the human fetal kidney cortex.ConclusionsThese finding support the presence of cells expressing HSC transcriptome in human kidney. The mechanisms of the appearance of the cells with the same transcriptional features during iPSC-derived kidney organoid generation requires further investigation.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belinda Phipson ◽  
Pei X Er ◽  
Lorna Hale ◽  
David Yen ◽  
Kynan Lawlor ◽  
...  

AbstractWe have previously reported a protocol for the directed differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem cells to kidney organoids comprised of nephrons, proximal and distal epithelium, vasculature and surrounding interstitial elements. The utility of this protocol for applications such as disease modelling will rely implicitly on the developmental accuracy of the model, technical robustness of the protocol and transferability between iPSC lines. Here we report extensive transcriptional analyses of the sources of variation across the timecourse of differentiation from pluripotency to complete kidney organoid, focussing on repeated differentiations to day 18 organoid. Individual organoids generated within the same differentiation experiment show Spearman’s correlation coefficients of >0.99. The greatest source of variation was seen between experimental batch, with the enrichment for genes that also varied temporally between day 10 and day 25 organoids implicating nephron maturation as contributing to transcriptional variance between individual differentiation experiments. A morphological analysis revealed a transition from renal vesicle to capillary loop stage nephrons across the same time period. Distinct iPSC clones were also shown to display congruent transcriptional programs with inter-experimental and inter-clonal variation most strongly associated with nephron patterning. Even epithelial cells isolated from organoids showed transcriptional alignment with total organoids of the same day of differentiation. This data provides a framework for managing experimental variation, thereby increasing the utility of this approach for personalised medicine and functional genomics.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dilip Thomas ◽  
Sushma Shenoy ◽  
Nazish Sayed

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) complications have contributed significantly toward poor survival of cancer patients worldwide. These complications that result in myocardial and vascular damage lead to long-term multisystemic disorders. In some patient cohorts, the progression from acute to symptomatic CVD state may be accelerated due to exacerbation of underlying comorbidities such as obesity, diabetes and hypertension. In such situations, cardio-oncologists are often left with a clinical predicament in finding the optimal therapeutic balance to minimize cardiovascular risks and maximize the benefits in treating cancer. Hence, prognostically there is an urgent need for cost-effective, rapid, sensitive and patient-specific screening platform to allow risk-adapted decision making to prevent cancer therapy related cardiotoxicity. In recent years, momentous progress has been made toward the successful derivation of human cardiovascular cells from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). This technology has not only provided deeper mechanistic insights into basic cardiovascular biology but has also seamlessly integrated within the drug screening and discovery programs for early efficacy and safety evaluation. In this review, we discuss how iPSC-derived cardiovascular cells have been utilized for testing oncotherapeutics to pre-determine patient predisposition to cardiovascular toxicity. Lastly, we highlight the convergence of tissue engineering technologies and precision medicine that can enable patient-specific cardiotoxicity prognosis and treatment on a multi-organ level.


2019 ◽  
Vol 81 (1) ◽  
pp. 335-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa H. Little ◽  
Lorna J. Hale ◽  
Sara E. Howden ◽  
Santhosh V. Kumar

Human kidney tissue can now be generated via the directed differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells. This advance is anticipated to facilitate the modeling of human kidney diseases, provide platforms for nephrotoxicity screening, enable cellular therapy, and potentially generate tissue for renal replacement. All such applications will rely upon the accuracy and reliability of the model and the capacity for stem cell–derived kidney tissue to recapitulate both normal and diseased states. In this review, we discuss the models available, how well they recapitulate the human kidney, and how far we are from application of these cells for use in cellular therapies.


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