Summary of the science
Stem cells are special cells that can turn into any other cell type. In the lab, scientists have been able to use these cells to generate small tissues that look like organs and can be kept alive and grown in the lab. These are known as organoids and are extremely useful models for understanding how real organs work. Melissa Little's research uses organoids similar to kidneys to understand how kidneys regenerate and how this information might be useful for medicine.
About the research
The kidney is a complex organ and requires more than 20 different cell types. Melissa Little and lab research how stem cells can be harnessed for kidney regeneration. To do this, they have developed kidney organoids from stem cells and, using this model system, have studied how these cells can be induced to generate the necessary cell types to rebuild a damaged kidney.
About the illustration