Researchers have revealed that they are just around the corner of a synthetic kidney that would be implanted inside the body and work like living organ. The revolutionary first archetype model of the apparatus could remove the requirement of dialysis.
The new device would include thousands of minuscule filters to take out toxins from the blood and a bioreactor to imitate the metabolic and water-balancing roles of a real kidney. The synthetic kidney is being developed with the joint efforts by the team engineers, biologist and physicians and is led by Dr Shuvo Roy from the University of California San Francisco.
The new treatment has already been confirmed to work for the sickest patients who used a room sized external model. The process depends on the blood pressure of the body to carry out filtration without the requirement of pumps or electrical power supply. The substitute treatment for kidney failure is dialysis.
In dialysis patients will have their blood filtered in three long sessions a week. This process is very tiring for patients and reinstates only thirteen percent of kidney functions. Only thirty-five percent patients survive for more than five years with this treatment.
But in new model study author Dr. Roy plans to apply silicon fabrication method together with specially engineered cubicles for live kidney cell, to shrink the size of current device to size of coffee cup. Tissue engineering will be used to grow renal tubule cells to provide other biological functions of a healthy kidney.
It would eliminate the requirement for immune suppressant drugs after it was implanted and would permit the patients to live a normal life. This apparatus is planned to provide most of the health benefits of a kidney transplant while dealing with the limited number of kidney donors each year, said Dr. Roy.
Moreover it could dramatically decrease the load of renal failure for millions of people universally.