Bone marrow stem cells contribute to healing of the kidney

A variety of recent studies support the existence of pathways, in adult humans and rodents, that allow adult stem cells to be surprisingly flexible in their differentiation repertoires. Termed plasticity, this property allows adult stem cells, assumed until now to be committed to generating a fixed range of progeny, on relocation to switch to make other specialized sets of cells appropriate to their new niche. Cells normally present within the bone marrow seem particularly flexible and are able to contribute usefully to many recipient organs. In studies of the liver, bone marrow-derived cells are seen with specialized structural and metabolic adaptations commensurate with their new locations, and these may be abundant, even sufficient, to rescue recipient mice from genetic defects and with evidence that they have proliferated in situ. In the kidney, several studies provide evidence for the presence of reprogrammed cells, but in most, it remains possible that cells arrive and redifferentiate but are no longer stem cells. Nevertheless, that appropriately differentiated cells are delivered deep within organs simply by injection of bone marrow cells should make us think differently about the way organs regenerate and repair. Migratory pathways for multipotential cells could be exploited to effect repairs using an individual's own stem cells, perhaps after gene therapy. This concept makes it clear that a transplanted organ would in time become affected by the genetic susceptibilities of the recipient, because of phenotypes that are expressed when trafficking cells incorporate and differentiate.