A Living Extracorporeal Device for Proximal Tubule Reabsorption

Abstract

Currently, 700,000 patients suffer from end-stage renal disease (ESRD) with treatment costs over $42B in the US, yet the 5-year survival of patients on dialysis is only 35% while that of full-organ transplantation is over 80%. Despite these discrepancies, only 20,000 transplants are performed annually due to an overwhelming shortage in donor kidneys. Our goal is to replace intermittent dialysis with a more biomimetic tissue-based platform that can serve as a bridge-to-transplantation or a suitable alternative to organ transplantation. In this work, we aim to design and optimize a milli- and microfluidic manifold geometry, to increase the interfacial strength of the tissue-adapter interface and, ultimately, to enable perfusion of 3D tissues at high flow rates (100s of mL/min) that occur during standard hemodialysis.