Platform to Generate Advanced Filtration Function in Renal Tissue Scaffolds: A Hemodialysis Graft as Proof of Concept

Donor organ shortage is one of the major challenges facing medicine today.Bioengineering tissues and organ grafts of human scale offers the possibility to alleviate donor organ shortage and waitlist mortality.To date this goal has been stymied byinadequate scaffold technology and the inability of researchers and industry teams to create the micro-scale functional architecture necessary for higher level organ function.In the case of kidney tissue,to develop functions such as filtration and concentration of urine, it is necessary to design living filtration membranes with thicknesses of 1-10 micrometers.Up to this point developing architecture on this scale has been impossible.Our company has developed IP for a process to create thick hydrogel-based vascularized tissue constructs which contain vsaculature and adjacent luminal compartments separated by membranes of <10 micrometers, capable of physiologic perfusion pressures. These membranes could allow for implantable living hemodialysis grafts that won't foul like synthetic membranes and can untether patients from constant hemodialysis sessions.This membrane technology also has implicationsfor the engineering ofother tissue types.