Kidney diseases are a prevalent health problem around the world. Multidrug therapy used in the current routine treatment for kidney diseases can only delay disease progression. None of these drugs or treatments can reverse the progression to an end-stage of the disease. Therefore, it is crucial to explore novel therapeutics to improve patients' quality of life and possibly cure, reverse, or alleviate the kidney disease. Stem cells have promising potentials as a form of regenerative medicine for kidney diseases due to their unlimited replication and their ability to differentiate into kidney cells in vitro. Mounting evidences from the administration of stem cells in an experimental kidney disease model suggested that stem cell-based therapy has therapeutic or renoprotective effects to attenuate kidney damage while improving the function and structure of both glomerular and tubular compartments. This review summarises the current stem cell-based therapeutic approaches to treat kidney diseases, including the various cell sources, animal models or in vitro studies. The challenges of progressing from proof-of-principle in the laboratory to widespread clinical application and the human clinical trial outcomes reported to date are also highlighted. The success of cell-based therapy could widen the scope of regenerative medicine in the future.

中文翻译：

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基于干细胞的肾脏疾病治疗的最新进展。

肾脏疾病是世界范围内普遍存在的健康问题。目前肾脏疾病常规治疗中使用的多药治疗只能延缓疾病进展。这些药物或治疗方法都不能逆转疾病进展到末期。因此，探索新的治疗方法以提高患者的生活质量并可能治愈、逆转或缓解肾脏疾病至关重要。由于干细胞的无限复制和体外分化为肾细胞的能力，干细胞具有作为肾脏疾病再生医学形式的有希望的潜力. 在实验性肾脏疾病模型中使用干细胞的越来越多的证据表明，基于干细胞的疗法具有治疗或肾脏保护作用，可减轻肾脏损伤，同时改善肾小球和肾小管区室的功能和结构。本综述总结了当前基于干细胞的肾脏疾病治疗方法，包括各种细胞来源、动物模型或体外研究。还强调了从实验室原理验证到广泛临床应用以及迄今为止报告的人体临床试验结果的挑战。基于细胞的疗法的成功可能会在未来扩大再生医学的范围。