Constructing Kidney-like Tissues from Cells Based on Programs for Organ Development: Toward a Method of in Vitro Tissue Engineering of the Kidney

The plausibility of constructing vascularized three-dimensional (3D) kidney tissue from cells was investigated. The kidney develops from mutual inductive interactions between cells of the ureteric bud (UB), derived from the Wolffian duct (WD), and the metanephric mesenchyme (MM). We found that isolated MMs were capable of inducing branching morphogenesis of the WD (an epithelial tube) in recombination cultures; suggesting that the isolated MM retains inductive capacity for WD-derived epithelial tubule cells other than those from the UB. Hanging drop aggregates of embryonic and adult renal epithelial cells from UB and mouse inner medullary collecting duct cell (IMCD) lines, which are ultimately of WD origin, were capable of inducing MM epithelialization and tubulogenesis with apparent connections (UB cells) and collecting duct-like tubules with lumens (IMCD). This supports the view that the collecting system can be constructed from certain epithelial cells (those ultimately of WD origin) when stimulated by MM. Although the functions of the MM could not be replaced by cultured mesenchymal cells, primary MM cells and one MM-derived cell line (BSN) produced factors that stimulate UB branching morphogenesis, whereas another, rat inducible metanephric mesenchyme (RIMM-18), supported WD budding as a feeder layer. This indicates that some MM functions can be recapitulated by cells. Although engineering of a kidney-like tissue from cultured cells alone remains to be achieved, these results suggest the feasibility of such an approach following the normal developmental progression of the UB and MM. Consistent with this notion, implants of kidney-like tissues constructed in vitro from recombinations of the UB and MM survived for over 5 weeks and achieved an apparently host-derived glomerular vasculature. Lastly, we addressed the issue of optimal macro- and micro-patterning of kidney-like tissue, which might be necessary for function of an organ assembled using a tissue engineering approach. To identify suitable conditions, 3D reconstructions of HoxB7-green fluorescent protein mouse rudiments (E12) cultured on a filter or suspended in a collagen gel (type I or type IV) revealed that type IV collagen 3D culture supports the deepest tissue growth (600 +/- 8 microm) and the largest kidney volume (0.22 +/- 0.02 mm(3)), and enabled the development of an umbrella-shaped collecting system such as occurs in vivo. Taken together with prior work (Rosines et al., 2007; Steer et al., 2002), these results support the plausibility of a developmental strategy for constructing and propagating vascularized 3D kidney-like tissues from recombinations of cultured renal progenitor cells and/or primordial tissue.