News

Introducing New RBK Collaborator Group with Zhongwei Li (USC)

Jul 26, 2023

The ATLAS-D2K Center is excited to introduce a new Collaborator Group for the ReBuilding A Kidney (RBK) Consortium! We welcome Principal Investigator Zhongwei Li from the University of Southern California (USC) to the consortium with his grant “The Synthetic Kidney: A Revolutionary Solution for the Shortage of Kidneys for Transplantation” (see the project page here).

Here is a brief summary of his project: 1 in 7 Americans suffer from chronic kidney disease, leading some to end-stage renal disease (ESRD). 2 in 1000 U.S. adults get ESRD, necessitating dialysis or a kidney transplant. Annually, over $49 billion is spent on ESRD treatment, affecting patients’ longevity and life quality. Kidney transplants offer the best survival chance, but donor kidneys are scarce. To address this, this project is introducing a synthetic kidney, engineered using progenitor populations mimicking the embryonic kidney. Once transplanted, this synthetic kidney matures naturally. The decade-long technological advances developed by this lab have enabled the production of essential kidney components, positioning them to address the kidney shortage through this innovative solution.

The ATLAS-D2K Center facilitates Collaborating Projects for the RBK consortium. These are funded projects working in areas of high relevance to RBK and currently supported by other independent, non-RBK funding sources.

The RBK consortium extends a warm welcome to PI Zhongwei Li and his lab!