Researchers have shone a light on the kidney immune system by developing the first cell atlas of the human kidney, which will have important implications for treating kidney diseases.

Chronic kidney disease is a serious condition affecting more than 850 million people worldwide and can often lead to fatal kidney failure. The immune system plays an important role in determining how kidney tissues respond to damage, but relatively little is known about how this works.
Now, however, researchers have created the first cell atlas of the human kidney immune system. This shows where different immune cells are located in the kidney and gives a much greater insight into what happens when kidney disease or damage occurs. Using single-cell RNA sequencing, the researchers sequenced the activity of 67,471 individual kidney cells from different stages of life. These cells were then mapped to generate the spatiotemporal topology of the human kidney to determine how the immune system develops and is organized.--> READ MORE