World's first human-like kidneys in grown pigs

Beijing In a significant breakthrough, Chinese scientists have for the first time in the world successfully created kidneys with human cells in pig embryos -- a big advance that may one day pave the way for human organ transplantation and tackle shortages.

When transferred into surrogate pig mothers, the developing humanised kidneys had normal structure and tubule formation after 28 days.

This is the first time that scientists have been able to grow a solid humanised organ inside another species, though previous studies have used similar methods to generate human tissues such as blood or skeletal muscle in pigs.

The researchers focused on kidneys because they are one of the first organs to develop, and they're also the most commonly transplanted organ in human medicine.

"Rat organs have been produced in mice, and mouse organs have been produced in rats, but previous attempts to grow human organs in pigs have not succeeded," said Liangxue Lai of the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Wuyi University in China.

"Our approach improves the integration of human cells into recipient tissues and allows us to grow human organs in pigs,” Lai added. The research appeared in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

Integrating human stem cells into pig embryos has been a challenge because pig cells outcompete human cells and pig and human cells have different physiological needs.