Current pharmaceutical options for most kidney diseases are unspecific and not designed to treat podocytes, the key cells for proper renal filtration, but rather act systemically causing many side effects.. We have isolated a new population of renal progenitors within the human amniotic fluid which can be easily differentiated into mature functional podocytes; we hypothesize that these cells are ideal for studying podocyte physiology and pathology and to understand the response to common therapeutic compounds. Thus, ultimately contribute to new therapies that can slow down the progression of already established renal damage due to loss of podocytes as well as, in the future to predict drug susceptibility among different patients.

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