posted on 2015-06-11, 12:22authored byAnna G. Sciancalepore, F. Sallustio, Salvatore Girardo, L. Gioia Passione, Andrea Camposeo, Elisa MeleElisa Mele, M. Di Lorenzo, V. Costantino, F.P. Schena, Dario Pisignano
We present a bio-inspired renal microdevice that resembles the in vivo structure of a kidney proximal tubule. For the first time, a population of tubular adult renal stem/progenitor cells (ARPCs) was embedded into a microsystem to create a bioengineered renal tubule. These cells have both multipotent differentiation abilities and an extraordinary capacity for injured renal cell regeneration. Therefore, ARPCs may be considered a promising tool for promoting regenerative processes in the kidney to treat acute and chronic renal injury. Here ARPCs were grown to confluence and exposed to a laminar fluid shear stress into the chip, in order to induce a functional cell polarization. Exposing ARPCs to fluid shear stress in the chip led the aquaporin-2 transporter to localize at their apical region and the Na+K+ATPase pump at their basolateral portion, in contrast to statically cultured ARPCs. A recovery of urea and creatinine of (20±5)% and (13±5)%, respectively, was obtained by the device. The microengineered biochip here-proposed might be an innovative “lab-on-a-chip” platform to investigate in vitro ARPCs behaviour or to test drugs for therapeutic and toxicological responses.
Funding
This study was supported by grants from “Regione Puglia” (Progetti strategici 44/09 BISIMANE and PS 144/06). Authors at the National Nanotechnology Laboratory of CNR-NANO also acknowledge the support of the Italian Ministry of University and Research through the FIRB Contract RBNE08BNL7 (MERIT Program).
History
School
Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering
Department
Materials
Published in
PLOS ONE
Volume
9
Issue
1
Pages
? - ? (11)
Citation
SCIANCALEPORE, A.G. ... et al, 2014. A bioartificial renal tubule device embedding human renal stem/progenitor cells. PLoS ONE, 9 (1), e87496.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/
Publication date
2014
Notes
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License CC-BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.