In a world first, researchers from Sheba Medical Center and Tel Aviv University have successfully grown human kidney organoids – a synthetic 3D organ culture – using kidney tissue stem cells.

The synthetic kidney organs matured and stayed stable for 34 weeks, which is the longest-lasting and purest set of kidney organoids ever developed.

Prof. Benjamin Dekel, Director of the Pediatric Nephrology Unit and the Stem Cell Research Institute at the Safra Children’s Hospital at Sheba Medical Center and Director of the Sagol Center for Regenerative Medicine at Tel Aviv University led the study. Doctoral student Dr. Michael Namestannikov, a graduate of the Physician-Researcher track at Tel Aviv University’s Faculty of Medicine, and Dr. Osnat Cohen-Sontag, a research associate at Sheba Medical Center, participated in the research.