Authors
Trivino-Cepeda, K., Amadeo, F., Hughes, D. M., Ressel, L., Garcia-Finana, M., Hanson, V., Taylor, A., Murray, P. A., Wilm, B.
Abstract
Rodent models of kidney disease have been widely used to assess the efficacy, safety and mode of action of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) as therapies. However, because kidney disease models, MSC type and the methods used to assess kidney injury tend to differ between research groups, it is difficult to obtain data that are sufficiently robust and reproducible to support clinical translation. We present here for the first time a side-by-side analysis of the performance of human MSCs derived from the most commonly used tissue sources, bone marrow (BM-), adipose- (A-) and umbilical cord (UC-), in a kidney ischaemia reperfusion injury (IRI) model in mice. For each animal, we performed a comprehensive assessment of kidney function and health by longitudinal transdermal measurements of sinistrin clearance, serum biomarker levels at the experimental endpoint, and histopathological scoring of sections from left and right kidneys. Furthermore, we tracked the MSCs by bioluminescence imaging in the injured mice to determine their viability over time and their capacity for homing to the damaged kidneys. Our results reveal that only modest if any beneficial effects of the MSC treatments were detectable on kidney function and histology, irrespective of cell type administered. Furthermore, all three MSC types were sequestered in the lungs without reaching the kidneys, and had completely disappeared within 7 days. Our data suggest that none of the MSC types has the capability to improve renal health following IRI to a meaningful extent, questioning their suitability as a clinical therapy.
Preprint server:
bioRxiv
The authors list and abstract were imported from bioRxiv on 22 Jun 2026.
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