Cell Therapy Using Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Renal Progenitors Ameliorates Acute Kidney Injury in Mice.

Unlabelled: Acute kidney injury (AKI) is defined as a rapid loss of renal function resulting from various etiologies, with a mortality rate exceeding 60% among intensive care patients. Because conventional treatments have failed to alleviate this condition, the development of regenerative therapies using human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) presents a promising new therapeutic option for AKI. We describe our methodology for generating renal progenitors from hiPSCs that show potential in ameliorating AKI.

Transgenic mouse expressing human CCR5 as a model for in vivo assessments of human selective CCR5 antagonists.

The species selectivity of receptor antagonists often hinders their preclinical assessment in vivo. In order to evaluate human selective CC chemokine receptor type 5 (CCR5) antagonists in vivo, we generated human CCR5 transgenic mice that expressed the transgene on both peripheral blood leukocytes as well as thymocytes. The selective CCR5 ligand CC chemokine ligand 4 (CCL4)/macrophage inflammatory protein (MIP)-1beta induced the chemotaxis of thymocytes that had been derived from the transgenic mice, but not from littermate mice, suggesting that the human CCR5 expressed in the transgenic mice were functional.