ADULT STEM CELL THERAPY FOR ACUTE RENAL FAILURE: THE HOPE BEYOND THE HYPE?

摘要

Acute renal failure (ARF) is a complication that occurs frequently in hospitalized patients, and ARF has 50-80% mortality in spite of major advances in intensive care and renal replacement therapy. Stem cells are generally defined as clonogenic cells that are capable of both self-renewal and multi-lineage differentiation. Many experimental animal studies have also showed that cell therapy [bone marrow cells (BMCs), hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs)] might have the potential to rescue animals from organ injuries. Several recent works have demonstrated that repopulation of damaged renal tubules after ARF occurs primarily due to proliferation of surviving tubular epithelial cells and putative renal-specific stem cells, with some contribution of paracrine factors from bone marrow-derived MSCs.