Wake Forest achieves a medical milestone as the first 3D-bioprinted kidney is transplanted into a human patient and begins functioning within 48 hours.
The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine has achieved what many considered the holy grail of bioengineering: the successful transplantation of a fully 3D-bioprinted kidney into a human patient. The organ, printed using cells derived from the patient's own body, began producing urine within 48 hours of transplantation and continues to function at six weeks post-surgery.
Dr. Anthony Atala, who has led kidney bioengineering research at Wake Forest for over two decades, performed the transplant procedure on a 54-year-old woman with end-stage kidney disease who had been on dialysis for seven years. The patient was selected because she was not a suitable candidate for traditional transplantation due to highly sensitized antibodies that would likely reject a donor organ.
The bioprinted kidney was constructed using a revolutionary multi-material bioprinting platform that deposits cells and biomaterials layer by layer to recreate the organ's complex internal architecture. The kidney contains approximately 1 million nephrons, the functional filtering units of the organ, arranged within a vascular network that allows blood to flow through the organ and waste products to be filtered into urine.
The printing process took approximately 14 days, preceded by six weeks of cell expansion during which the patient's kidney cells were harvested through a biopsy, multiplied in culture, and differentiated into the multiple cell types needed to construct a functional organ. Because the organ is derived entirely from the patient's own cells, immunosuppressive medication is not required.
At the six-week follow-up, the bioprinted kidney is filtering blood at approximately 60% of normal kidney function, sufficient to significantly reduce the patient's dialysis requirements. The research team expects function to continue improving as the organ matures and additional nephrons become active.
The breakthrough has enormous implications for the 800,000 people living with end-stage kidney disease in the United States alone. Of these, only about 25,000 receive kidney transplants annually due to the severe shortage of donor organs. Many patients die while waiting, and those who receive transplants face a lifetime of immunosuppressive medications.
Dr. Atala cautioned that significant work remains before bioprinted kidneys become widely available. The current process is expensive and time-consuming, and larger studies are needed to establish long-term safety and durability. However, the proof of concept represents an inflection point in regenerative medicine.
The NIH and DARPA have announced $500 million in additional funding for organ bioprinting research, with the goal of making the technology clinically available within a decade.