Australian researchers grow tiny human 'kidney' in a petri dish

The tiny lab-grown kidneys could be used test new drugs or one day treat people with kidney disease

The technology could one day be used to help patients with kidney problems (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Australian scientists have succeeded in growing tiny human kidneys in a Petri dish, in an achievement that they hope will one day lead to a new way of testing drugs or replacing kidneys.

They said the tiny 'organoids', to small to be considered true kidneys, which measure around 1cm in size, were equivalent to a developing kidney inside a 13-week old foetus.

As reported by the BBC, the structures were created by mimicking the process that takes place inside the womb.

The scientists started with human skin cells, which they chemically changed into stem cells. They then used more chemical signals to turn these stem cells into two types of cell found in kidneys - one that filters the blood, and another that removes the waste.

They brought these two cells together in a dish and grew them into a small yet functioning organoid. Their research has now been published in the high profile Nature journal.

However, the organioids were tiny, and there is still a long way to go - the lab-grown kidneys contained between 50 and 100 filters, whereas a full-size kidney has more than a million.

Speaking to BBC News, Professor Melissa Little from the Murdoch Children's Research Institute said that the long-term goal was to create a full-size organ that could treat someone with kidney disease.

In the shorter term, these minature organoids could be used to test new drugs, to see how they would react with real kidneys.