Lab-Made Kidneys Offer Hope

Researchers are hailing the promise of lab-made kidneys, and the hope of a safe and reliable way to save tens of thousands of lives each year.

FOX News Radio’s Bill Vitka reports:

Each year in the U.S., there are 100,000 people with end-stage kidney disease on a waiting list for a donor.  An estimated 10,000 succumb each year before a transplant can reach them.

Now, a team at Massachusetts General Hospital has made rat kidneys in the lab.  It’s an achievement that one day could see replacement organs created for people with kidney disease.

Organs made in this way have an advantage over other techniques: There’s no risk of rejection.  At the same time, the study – which appears in the journal “Nature Medicine” – warns that the work is in its early stages, and more challenges must be met before there’s any benefit for people.

Bill Vitka, FOX News Radio.