Lab-Grown Kidney Organoids Sprout Brain and Muscle Cells

Lab-grown organs have been observed suddenly sprouting cells belonging to brains and muscles, leaving scientists bewildered, Dailymail.co.uk reported.

The miniature kidneys, made using test tubes and beakers in a laboratory, failed to behave the way they were expected to according to scientists.

Instead of growing into different kinds of kidney cells, they formed into brain and muscle cells.

Benjamin D. Humphreys, director of the Division of Nephrology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, said:

There’s a lot of enthusiasm for growing organoids as models for diseases that affect people.

But scientists haven’t fully appreciated that some of the cells that make up those organoids may not mimic what we would find in people.

The good news is that with a simple intervention, we could block most of the rogue cells from growing.

The miniature kidneys (kidney organoids) initially come from human stem cells and could eventually be used to treat people with kidney diseases.

This could accelerate our progress in making organoids better models for human kidney disease and drug discovery, and the same technique could be applied to targeting rogue cells in other organoids.

Developing kidney organoids is driven by the reality that we have so many patients with failing kidneys and no effective drugs to offer them.

Dr. Humphreys added that between “10% to 20% of cells in the mini-kidneys failed to develop further into kidneys cells – instead becoming brains and muscle cells.”

Dr. Humphreys argued that development is slow because of a “lack of good models,” adding that, “We rely on mice and rats, and they are not little humans.”

Dr. Humphreys also told Live Science, that “when off-target cells appear in an organoid, it means that it doesn’t faithfully model a human kidney.”

However, researchers analyzing the cells found they could intervene by cutting down on the number of rogue brain cells found in the lab created kidney by 90 percent.

One can only wonder about those scientists growing human organs inside animals and what types of cells those organoids have become.

If you need a refresher, read this creepy bone-chilling article by National Geographic about sheep human hybrids. I really wish I was joking and this was fake news.

Science is far from perfect, these types of blunders happen all the time in experimentation; it’s trial and error. But this showcases how man is trying to play “god.” It seems that may not be a good idea and there could be consequences for man’s experiments.

Nonetheless, science is still determined and it has been reported that you will be able to grow-your-own organs within possibly just five years. Although the safer option for humans and animals alike may be using 3D printers to print workable organs instead.

Just because you can mess with nature’s genetic code of life, doesn’t mean you should.

However, an astounding 57% of Americans consider the practice OK and want the use of the technology to genetically engineer animals to grow organs or tissues that could be used for humans needing an organ transplant, while 41% say this is going too far, according to a survey taken in August this year by the Pew Research Center.

I wonder how much those survey results would change knowing the practice can spawn rogue cells in the organoids? My bet is less would favor the use of the technology if they knew it was unsafe and unpredictable.

Aaron Kesel writes for Activist Post. Support us at Patreon. Follow us on Minds, Steemit, SoMee, BitChute, Facebook and Twitter. Ready for solutions? Subscribe to our premium newsletter Counter Markets.

Image credit: Pixabay