title: Whole kidney engineering for clinical translation.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Renal transplantation is currently the only definitive treatment for end-stage renal disease; however, this treatment is severely limited by the shortage of implantable kidneys. To address this shortcoming, development of an engineered, transplantable kidney has been proposed. Although current advances in engineering kidneys based on decellularization and recellularization techniques have offered great promises for the generation of functional kidney constructs, most studies have been conducted using rodent kidney constructs and short-term in-vivo evaluation. Toward clinical translations of this technique, several limitations need to be addressed.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Human-sized renal scaffolds are desirable for clinical application, and the fabrication is currently feasible using native porcine and discarded human kidneys. Current progress in stem cell biology and cell culture methods have demonstrated feasibility of the use of embryonic stem cells, induced pluripotent stem cells, and primary renal cells as clinically relevant cell sources for the recellularization of renal scaffolds. Finally, approaches to long-term implantation of engineered kidneys are under investigation using antithrombogenic strategies such as functional reendothelialization of acellular kidney matrices.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In the field of bioengineering, whole kidneys have taken a number of important initial steps toward clinical translations, but many challenges must be addressed to achieve a successful treatment for the patient with end-stage renal disease.
authors: aWake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA bKonkuk University Medical College, Seoul, Korea.
authors: Ick-Hee
authors: IH
authors: Kim
authors: In Kap
authors: IK
authors: Ko
authors: Anthony
authors: A
authors: Atala
authors: James J
authors: JJ
authors: Yoo
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D006801:Humans; D007668:Kidney / Q000502:physiology* / Q000601:surgery; D007676:Kidney Failure, Chronic / Q000601:surgery; D016030:Kidney Transplantation; D023822:Tissue Engineering / Q000379:methods; D054457:Tissue Scaffolds