Nat. Biotechnol. 37,303–313 (2019)

Primary kidney tubular epithelial organoids, termed tubuloids, can be derived from human urine and are able to model key features of kidney nephrons in health and disease.

Kidney organoids can be derived from pluripotent stem cells, which are in turn derived from human adult fibroblasts, making this a lengthy procedure not appropriate for personalized therapy modeling.

A group of researchers from the Netherlands developed a protocol to rapidly derive tubuloids from adult stem cells (including from human urine), making them appropriate to model response to therapy and infections.

In the future, these tubuloids could be employed in personalized therapy approaches.