Kidney transplant or kidney dialysis are the current treatment for end stage chronic renal failure (ESRF) and acute renal failure (ARF). Although these therapies have proved the ability to increase life expectancy and improve the quality of life of patients, but there are several limitations of such treatments.Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine can offer alternative modalities that could improve, restore or replace renal function. Cell based therapy showed promising results in kidney regeneration and improving kidney function in an experimental model to treat CKD. However, it is limited by the complexity of the kidney and is not effective for end stage renal failure (ESRF) where complex structure of kidney including its scaffold is deteriorated severely. Consequently, ESRD requires whole kidney regeneration which is another approach to replace damaged kidney.
In this article, we willreview different approaches in kidney regeneration, and highlights the obstacles that limit the application of each approach for kidney regeneration in patients with kidney diseases.