Ways and Means of Cellular Reconditioning for Kidney Regeneration.

The arsenal of regenerative medicine and nephrology consisting of organ transplantation, use of stem cells, cell-free approaches, cell reprogramming strategies, and organ engineering has been enriched by the reconditioning strategy. The latter is based on the recognition of two facts that (a) impairment of diverse cellular organelles contributes to pathogenesis of kidney disease and (b) individual organelles are functionally interactively coupled, which explains the "domino effect" leading to their dysfunction. Reconditioning takes advantage of these facts and, while initially directed to restore the function of individual cellular organelles, culminates in the propagation of a therapeutic intervention to account for improved cell and organ function. Examples of such interventions are briefly summarized along the presentation of defective cellular organelles contributing to pathogenesis of kidney disease.