A tissue engineering approach to reduce animal use in renal development and renal organ replacement technology

This project has two aims; (1) to replace animals in an important field of research and (2) to develop a superior culture system for renal tissue engineering. Research into renal regeneration and renal replacement therapy is growing rapidly, driven by urgent clinical need. It is clear, however, that advance will depend on a better understanding of signalling and lineage in normal renal development. These are being investigated in a variety of ways, all of which use animals, either in vivo or by organ culture of kidneys isolated from embryos. The organ culture system has proved particularly useful, but is still limited in its ability to allow manipulation of gene expression. This project aims to produce cell lines that can give rise to specific components of the kidney in an organotypic setting, and can reconstitute a whole embryonic kidney in combination. Based on our existing systems, we will produce these cell lines both by conditional immortalization of cells from embryonic kidneys and by sorting and culture of ES cell derivatives. We will assess the fates available to each line in an organotypic context and will assess their ability to produce renal structures, up to a whole kidney, in novel tissue engineering culture systems based on our current state-of-the-art. This project brings together the expertise of three laboratories to achieve a significant advance in both the 3Rs and in renal regeneration and replacement by tissue engineering.

• Engagement Activities: Pint of Science 2016
• Research Review 2011: Replacing the use of animals with kidney cell lines