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Osafune Lab
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A lab that creates kidneys, pancreases, and livers from iPS cells, leading to transplantation and new drugs.
AboutAbout the lab
Making missing organs from iPS cells.
For intractable diseases of the kidney, pancreas, and liver, such as chronic kidney disease, diabetes, and cirrhosis, there is a serious shortage of donor organs for transplantation, which is the curative treatment.
The Osafune Lab studies how to regenerate kidneys, pancreases, and livers from human iPS cells, producing cells and organs usable for transplantation as well as new therapeutic drugs.
Drawing on knowledge of developmental biology, the lab has established methods to efficiently differentiate iPS cells into the cells that form these three organs.
Key terms
- Organoid
- A small organ-like tissue made by culturing stem cells and other cells in three dimensions
- Nephron
- The basic unit of the kidney that produces urine, consisting of a glomerulus and a renal tubule
- Pancreatic islet
- A cluster of cells in the pancreas that secrete hormones such as insulin, which regulate blood glucose
- Polycystic kidney disease
- A hereditary disease in which many fluid-filled sacs (cysts) form in the kidneys and kidney function gradually declines
ResearchResearch themes
The lab works on elucidating the developmental mechanisms of the kidney, pancreas, and liver, cell transplantation therapy, creating organs for transplantation, and drug discovery using disease models.
*Illustrative imageMaking kidneys and treating kidney disease
The lab has succeeded in generating nephron organoids containing glomeruli and renal tubules, as well as collecting duct organoids, from human iPS cells.
*Illustrative imageMaking pancreatic islets and hepatocytes
The lab developed a method to efficiently generate islet-like tissue containing β cells from human iPS cells, and built an evaluation system that can be used for drug discovery for type 2 diabetes.
*Illustrative imageModels of hereditary kidney disease and drug discovery
Using collecting duct organoids made from iPS cells of patients with polycystic kidney disease, the lab built a model of renal cysts and found that drugs acting on retinoic acid receptors suppress cyst formation.
MembersFaculty
- ProfessorKenji Osafune
- Program-Specific Lecturer (Research Base)Shinichi Mae
- Program-Specific LecturerToshikazu Araoka
- Program-Specific Assistant ProfessorYu Hatano
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Report an errorAbout the images
The top and research theme images are illustrative and were not taken at the lab. They are cropped from Wikimedia Commons images. Cropped CC BY-SA images are provided under the same CC BY-SA license as the original (version shown on each line).
- Top image: “Kidney Organoid (NIH BioArt )” Courtesy of NIAID Ryan Kissinger / Public domain (cropped)
- Making kidneys and treating kidney disease: “Kidney nephron molar transport diagram.ja” M.Komorniczak / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
- Making pancreatic islets and hepatocytes: “Diagram showing a pancreatic islet and four stages of T1D disease driven by heparanase and loss of intra-islet glycosaminoglycan heparan sulfate (HS)” Charmaine Simeonovic, Andrew Ziolkowski, Zuopeng Wu, Fui Jiun Choong, Craig Freeman, Christopher R Parish / CC BY 3.0 (cropped)
- Models of hereditary kidney disease and drug discovery: “Polycystic Kidney” BruceBlaus / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Ikeya Lab): “Migration of Neural Crest Cells (v2)” MWatson12 / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Sakurai Lab): “Skeletal muscle1-es” The original uploader was Jeremykemp at English Wikipedia. / CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Saito Lab): “Stem Cell Research” The U.S. Food and Drug Administration / Public domain (cropped)
- Related lab (Hotta Lab): “Cas9 5AXW” Thomas Splettstoesser (www.scistyle.com) / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
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