A New Hybrid Scaffold Technology Opens the Door to Restoring Damaged Kidney Function

Oland Bio Co., Ltd., together with research teams from CHA University and Kyungpook National University Hospital, announced on June 19 that they have developed a new biotechnology treatment capable of effectively restoring and regenerating chronically damaged kidney function caused by various factors.

Donggeun Han, CEO of Orland Bio. Orland Bio

The research team developed a special hybrid scaffold that activates intracellular survival signaling pathways, and applied it to animal models of chronic kidney disease. As a result, they confirmed not only structural recovery of kidney tissue but also significant improvement in overall kidney function, including filtration of waste products from the blood. This research is expected to provide a new therapeutic alternative for patients with chronic kidney disease, who currently have limited treatment options and must rely on long-term dialysis or kidney transplantation.

Recently, the number of chronic kidney disease patients has surged due to aging populations, diabetes, and hypertension. However, once kidney tissue is damaged, it cannot regenerate on its own, leading to a progressive loss of kidney function—a critical issue. Conventional stem cell or therapeutic agents have limitations, as their survival rates are low in the harsh chronic inflammatory environment within the body, and they cannot remain at the affected site for long periods, making it difficult to achieve actual kidney regeneration.

To address this challenge, the research team developed a 'bio-instructive hybrid scaffold' by combining biocompatible polymers—safely degradable within the human body—with bioactive substances. This scaffold is precisely designed to continuously stimulate and activate the 'PI3K-Akt' pathway, a key signaling mechanism that regulates cell survival and proliferation. This maximizes the survival of therapeutic agents administered into the kidney, promotes vascular formation within kidney tissue, and induces a complementary healing effect by strongly inhibiting cell death and fibrosis (the hardening of tissue). In experiments involving rats with chronic kidney injury resulting from removal of most of their kidneys, application of this technology restored the microstructure of damaged kidney tissue to near-normal levels, and almost normalized blood urea nitrogen (BUN) and creatinine filtration levels, demonstrating outstanding kidney function recovery.

This study was accepted for publication in ACS Nano (Impact Factor: 16.1), the world’s leading journal in the field of nano- and biomaterials, published by the American Chemical Society, as of June 16. The research team expects that the newly developed hybrid scaffold technology will become a core platform not only for kidney regeneration but also for various organ regenerative medicine fields, and that its future commercialization will provide substantial improvements in the quality of life for chronic kidney disease patients.

Meanwhile, Oland Bio Co., Ltd. is a global leader in medical devices and tissue regeneration based on advanced biomaterials. The company has commercialized kidney function recovery scaffolds and absorbable hemostats, and is developing advanced medical devices such as functional bone grafts and osteoarthritis treatments, as well as tissue engineering products for cartilage and bone. Currently, non-clinical approval trials for kidney function recovery hydrogel scaffolds for both companion animals and humans are underway at Corestem ChemOn.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.