Sentences with word «podocyte»

Angiotensin II increases the intracellular calcium activity in podocytes of the intact glomerulus.

A team led by Donald Ingber, Professor of Bioengineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Founding Director of Harvard's Wyss Institute of Biologically Inspired Engineering, now reports a solution to this challenge in Nature Biomedical Engineering, which enables the differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells into mature podocytes with more than 90 percent efficiency.

This was followed by postdoctoral work at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, California, in which Dr. Da Sacco focused his research on the differentiation of the previously identified renal progenitors into podocyte - like cells.

Scanning electron micrograph of a human stem cell - derived matured podocyte with multiple primary and secondary processes extending in all directions on extracellular matrix - coated material.

To generate almost pure populations of human podocytes in cell culture, Samira Musah, the study's first author and HMS Dean's Postdoctoral Fellow who is working with Ingber at the Wyss Institute, leveraged pieces of the stem cell biologists» arsenal, and merged them with snippets taken from Ingber's past research on how cells in the body respond to adhesive factors and physical forces in their tissue environments.

Key to each of these units is a structure known the «glomerulus», in which podocyte cells wrap themselves tightly around a tuft of capillaries separated only by a thin membrane composed of extracellular matrix, and leave slits between them to build an actual filtration barrier.

Human glomerular podocytes further matured around adjacent blood vessels as in a living body (image 1) and formed a characteristic filtration membrane structure..

Even when animals began treatment at advanced stages of the disease, AC1903 was able to prevent further podocyte loss and suppress proteinuria, indicating restored kidney function.

The team tested AC1903 in a rat model of kidney disease caused by hypertension and saw the same results: The treatment preserved kidney podocytes and prevented the organs from failing, even in advanced disease.

«Our method not only uses soluble factors that guide kidney development in the embryo but, by growing and differentiating stem cells on extracellular matrix components that are also contained in the membrane separating the glomerular blood and urinary systems, we more closely mimic the natural environment in which podocytes are induced and mature,» said Musah.

MCD is diagnosed based on the characteristic podocyte, elongations of the cell normally too tiny to be seen through a light microscope.

Research Interests: Kidney disease; HIV - associated nephropathy; APOL1 biology; Podocyte biology and kidney development; Basement membranes and extracellular matrix biology; Eukaryotic gene regulation

After colleagues at Sanofi provided an investigational compound that activates PKM2, the team showed that this compound could stop abnormalities in mouse podocytes both in cell culture and in two mouse models of diabetes.

To build an in vitro model of the human glomerulus to probe deeper into its function and vulnerabilities to disease and drug toxicities, researchers have been attempting to engineer human stem cells — that in theory can give rise to any mature cell type — so that they form into functional podocytes.

Now, with the team's newly engineered human kidney glomerulus - on - a-chip, researchers also can get in vitro access to the kidney's core filtration mechanisms that are critical for drug clearance and pharmacokinetics, in addition to studying human podocytes at work.

These cell culture efforts, however, so far have failed to produce populations of mature podocytes pure enough as to be useful for modeling glomerular filtration.

Linking the differentiation process with organ - on - a-chip technology pioneered by his team, the researchers went on to engineer the first in vitro model of the human glomerulus, demonstrating effective and selective filtration of blood proteins and podocyte toxicity induced by a chemotherapy drug in vitro.

(ref1, ref2, ref3) When podocytes loose their grip on the tiny incoming blood filtering vessels where they belong (the afferent glomerular arteriole capillaries), they wind up in the urine.

Podocytes arrange themselves to have small slits between these feet (think of them more as fingers).

They are called podocytes.

Ways for your veterinarian or physician to halt CKD, or even reverse it, will have to wait until we understand podocytes better.

Once podocytes loss begins, like a tree, bent to a severe angle by a storm - it will continue to slowly fall even after the wind ceases even though the remaining filers «super nephrons» enlarge (hypertrophy) and work harder.

«The development of a functional human kidney glomerulus chip opens up an entirely new experimental path to investigate kidney biology, carry out highly personalized modeling of kidney diseases and drug toxicities, and the stem cell - derived kidney podocytes we developed could even offer a new injectable cell therapy approach for regenerative medicine in patients with life - threatening glomerulopathies in the future,» said Ingber.

Research Interests: Kidney disease; APOL1 biology; Podocyte cell signaling; Precision medicine; Multicenter clinical trials; Kidney health policy

The iPS cells are cultured on the opposite side of the membrane in the other channel that represents the glomerulus» urinary compartment, where they are induced to form a layer of mature podocytes that extend long cellular processes through the pores in the membrane and contact the underlying endothelial cells.

Filtration in the glomerulus is performed by cells called «podocytes» that are in direct contact with the blood vessels.

They continued the analysis by taking out only the podocytes of the human glomeruli using the green fluorescence, and revealed that glomerular podocytes made in vitro express the same genes important for normal biological function.

«Therefore, we focused on analyzing the podocyte of the glomeruli in detail,» said Professor Ryuichi Nishinakamura who led the research.

This report of the successful connection of capillaries with the podocytes of iPS cell - manufactured human glomeruli resulting in a distinct filtration membrane is the first of its kind in the world.

Green: podocyte, Red: glomerular basement membrane.

Through the special filtration membrane of the podocytes, protein does not leak into the urine but allows moisture pass through.

In diseased kidneys, TRPC5 causes an influx of calcium ions into the podocyte, eventually destroying it.

Resolvin D - 1 attenuated the signs of kidney inflammation that were seen in heart - attack mice not given the bioactive mediator — the non-resolvin D - 1 animals had distorted kidney morphology, enhanced levels of the kidney injury marker NGAL and diminished amounts of nephrin — a protein necessary for proper functioning of the kidney — in the podocytes of the kidney filtering structure.

The kidney damage is characterized by loss of the filtration cells, or «podocytes,» which normally keep essential proteins in the blood and filter out toxins.

«We could literally count the podocytes and see that the cells were preserved with this treatment,» said Greka.

The scientists got another surprise when they followed up on this finding with mouse experiments that exposed specialized kidney cells called «podocytes», a key component of the blood filtering, to high levels of glucose.

Podocytes are the target of many congenital or acquired kidney diseases, and they are often harmed by drugs.

(ref) It is only recently that scientists have become aware of the podocyte's critical role in kidney health.

Podocytes have multiple projections or feet.

The cells that researches zero in on in declining kidney function are the podocytes, cells in the kidney's filtering apparatus that underlies its blood - cleansing abilities.