PUTTING live kidney cells into conventional dialysis machines could help some patients survive acute kidney failure.
David Humes of the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor has devised a way to lace dialysis tubes with donated renal proximal tubule cells, which usually regulate levels of chemicals called cytokines in the blood. It appears that when these cells react to waste products filtered out of the blood they produce certain messenger molecules, though it is not clear why. When fed back into the patient’s blood, these molecules regulate cytokine levels, which in turn help prevent the inflammation that can…
