‘The big question I’ve been trying to answer for almost 35 years is, how you recreate a kidney.’ – Professor Melissa Little
Professor Melissa Little and Dr Sean Wilson from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute are tackling chronic kidney disease, studying kidney development and pioneering ways to regenerate kidney tissue in the lab.
With 1 in 10 adults expected to experience some level of kidney failure by 2030 worldwide, the urgency to find solutions for chronic kidney disease has never been greater.
Meet the minds behind this breakthrough research in our first knowledge impact case study.
- Video transcript
0:06 Professor Melissa Little
My name's Professor Melissa Little, and I'm a professor here at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, and I lead the kidney disease and regeneration team here at MCRI.So I think the big question I've been trying to answer for almost 35 years, is how you recreate a kidney. We know that actually the kidney is a vital organ after birth, but it forms during development. And we've really been trying to understand how that process happens so that we can better understand kidney disease and also see if we can find ways of treating kidney failure.
0:42 Dr Sean Wilson
I'm Dr Sean Wilson, I'm a post-doctoral researcher at reNEW Copenhagen. I started my research journey in Melissa Little's group in Melbourne, first as a research assistant and then as a PhD student.My research focuses on using stem cells to try and understand the kidney in a human context, and so we generate kidney organoids from human pluripotent stem cells to better understand kidney development, disease and regeneration.
1:05 Professor Melissa Little
Chronic kidney disease is at pandemic levels internationally. The Australian Kidney Foundation estimates that 1 in 10 adults will have some level of renal failure by 2030. I think most people imagine that a chronic kidney disease patient is an elderly adult. In fact, there are 1 in 15,000 children born with genetic forms of kidney disease that can result in very early renal failure. And so we can't forget the children in this conversation.1:39 Dr Sean Wilson
The aim of my current research is to generate kidney organoids that more accurately model the human kidney itself, which closes the gap on us being able to use that model system to better understand health outcomes for kidney patients.1:52 Professor Melissa Little
I have to say, as a graduate in Physiology and Biochemistry, I think it was sort of accidental that I became involved in a kidney project. When I started research as a young molecular and cellular biologist we didn't have genomes sequenced. We really had very little understanding of the molecular basis of how an organ forms. And so what I do now in the laboratory was not even conceived at the time I started research.Almost 10 years ago, we were the first laboratory internationally that found a way of recreating the development of human kidney in a dish from pluripotent stem cells.
My entire career has relied upon funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.
2:45 Dr Sean Wilson
NHMRC research funding provided the support for me to take on my research assistant role and then my PhD studies in the group of Professor Melissa Little, and that has really provided the foundation for me to take my career on as a postdoc in the field of kidney research.3:02 Professor Melissa Little
I think we're incredibly fortunate in Australia to have a dedicated, protected budget for the support of health and medical research.Our research into the causes of kidney disease are having impacts around genetic diagnosis in children with kidney disease and with abnormalities of the urogenital tract.
3:27 Dr Sean Wilson
What I would really like to drive as a postdoctoral researcher and beyond is to be able to take stem cell research to a point where it becomes a really mainstream way in which we use it to serve people in real world applications in medical research, personalised medicine and ways to better understand all of our organ systems in this way.3:53 Professor Melissa Little
The National Health and Medical Research Council funding is the bedrock of biomedical research in this country, and that support from the NHMRC has been absolutely critical in the outcomes from my research.End of transcript.