Stem Cell Therapy for Kidney Disease

The kidney is a highly complex organ, composed of more than 30 different cell types in different compartments, such as tubular epithelial cells, interstitial cells, glomerular cells and cells of the vasculature.

Currently the CKD patients are increasing worldwide and there is no appropriate treatment available for chronic kidney disease. So based on successful experiment on the animals, now researchers are hopeful of its application on human being.

Chronic kidney disease causes dysfunction of the cells from vascular, interstitial, glomerular and tubular compartments, which triggers the release of fibrogenic cytokines and recruitment of inflammatory cells to injured kidneys. The rapid interposition of scar tissue probably confers a survival advantage by preventing infectious microorganisms from invading the wound, but prevents subsequent tissue or renal cell regeneration.

After Stem cell transplantation into CKD patient provides improvement like reduced creatinine level because stem cells like mesenchymal stem cell has the property to differentiate into renal specific cells also like nephron, tubular epithelial cells and others. After infusion of stem cells into the CKD patients via intravenously then these stem cells automatically migrate to the injured/inflammated site and then start to regenerate the damaged/injured renal tissue and also induce/activate resident stem cells in the renal via para/autocrine signaling. So mesenchymal stem cells therapy provides better environment to regenerate the damaged cells via differentiating into the renal specific cells and also induce the resident stem cells.

Mesenchymal Stem Cells have some advantages after the transplantation followed as 

• Antiapoptic

• Immune modulation

• Anti inflammatory

• Anti- fibrosis

Stem cell treatment may reduce/maintain serum creatinine level in end stage/chronic kidney patient for a long time but there is no assurance that it may be alternative of kidney transplant in future after stem cell therapy. As kidney transplant success rate is not 100% in kidney failure patient and few patient may get again kidney related problem even after kidney transplant because of the usage of immunosuppressant drug for a long time so if patients who already got kidney transplant and again facing kidney disease then stem cell therapy may reduce/maintain serum creatinine level and also reduce the immunosuppressant drug dosage because mesenchymal stem cell has the immune-modulation property and suppress the activation of T-regulatory cells after infusion.