A review on renal autologous cell transplantation: an investigational approach towards chronic kidney disease

Abstract

Chronic kidney disease is among the most common causes of mortality and morbidity in adult population with limited therapeutic approaches including various medications and kidney replacement therapies. Kidney transplantation is the gold standard therapeutic alternative for the management of chronic kidney disease; nonetheless, important drawbacks include the lack of adequate living or deceased donors, high rates of pre- and post-operative complications including surgical complications, infectious complications and medication-induced adverse effects. With the latest preclinical and in vitro studies demonstrating the potentiality of kidney cells obtained from diseased kidneys to convert into fully functional kidney cells lead to a novel therapeutic alternative referred as autologous selected renal cell transplantation. Even though the clinical studies investigating the efficiency and adverse effects of autologous selected renal cell transplantation are limited, it is no doubt promising. The need for future large-scale studies on chronic kidney disease patients from a diversity of etiologies is clear for the better establishment of the therapeutic potential of autologous selected renal cell transplantation. In this narrative review, our aim is to evaluate the role of renal autologous stem cell therapy in the management of chronic kidney disease.