Kidney
Kidney disease is a major health crisis that is expected to dramatically increase over the next ten years. Dialysis and organ transplantation help manage kidney failure, but with serious complications and high costs. Heightening the need for better treatments for kidney failure is a lack of drug therapies that can prevent kidney disease progression.
For these reasons, a number of researchers are trying to develop cell-based therapies for kidney failure. To further this treatment avenue, some researchers need donated kidneys to search for stem cells that can be used to replace diseased kidney cells. Others are using cultured human kidney cells to develop a cell therapy device that hopefully can improve the success rate of dialysis.
Researchers need donated kidneys on which to conduct safety assessments of new drugs and chemical and household products. Often the human kidney tissue response differs from the animal response, so this research is vital to the development of safe drugs and other products.
Researchers need donated kidneys delivered within 24 to 36 hours post cross clamp. NDRI will accept kidney donations from donors 18 to 50 years old as long as the donor has no history of recent drug use, and did not test positive for an infectious disease. Flush and store kidney donations in histidine-tryptophan-ketoglutarate (HTK) solution or in University of Wisconsin (UW) solution.