Engineered Kidney Tubules for Modeling Patient-Specific Diseases and Drug Discovery
Abstract(#br)The lack of engineering systems able to faithfully reproduce complex kidney structures in vitro has made it difficult to efficiently model kidney diseases and development . Using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) scaffolds and a kidney-derived cell line we developed a system to rapidly engineer custom-made 3D tubules with typical renal epithelial properties. This system was successfully employed to engineer patient-specific tubules, to model polycystic kidney disease (PKD) and test drug efficacy, and to identify a potential new pharmacological treatment.