Scientists at USC’s Keck School of Medicine have created advanced lab-grown kidney “assembloids” by combining different types of kidney organoids. Unlike earlier models, these assembloids matured further, developing blood vessels, connective tissue, and kidney-like functions such as blood filtration, hormone secretion, and early urine production after being transplanted into mice.
Mouse assembloids reached newborn-level maturity, while human assembloids matured beyond embryonic stages. The team also demonstrated disease modeling by engineering human assembloids lacking the PKD2 gene, which caused them to develop cysts, inflammation, and fibrosis—features of polycystic kidney disease that were previously difficult to replicate in the lab.
Researchers say these assembloids offer a powerful new platform for studying kidney diseases and represent a major step toward building functional synthetic kidneys to help the over 100,000 U.S. patients awaiting transplants.
Credit: GEN