by Joel Brody, Peter Young and Gerald Cunha

Renal capsule grafting is a method of growing embryonic or neonatal organ rudiments in vivo for extended periods, for maintaining adult tissues in vivo, or for growing neoplastic cells. Because of the kidney is one of the most vascular organs in the body, take rate approaches 100% when the operator is skilled. Vascularization of the graft occurs with a few days so that the graft responds to the hormonal milieu of the host. Through use of immuno-incompetent hosts (athymic and scid mice or rats) tissues from any mammalian (including human) and avian species can be successfully grown under the renal capsule, and both normal and tumor tissues can be grown in this site. One important use of renal capsule grafting involves the "rescue" of organ rudiments of "knockout mice" that are embryonic or neonatal lethal. If organ rudiments of such mice are transplanted before the donor dies, grafts of "knockout" tissues can be grown for sufficient periods to achieve for maximal expression of morphogenesis, differentiation and function. By this method it is possible to determine whether "knockout" tissues actually have a phenotype even though the donor is non-viable.
The kidney at the left shows three embryonic mouse mammary gland rudiments grown under the kidney capsule for one month. The grafts were removed and imaged (right). The middle graft had a small piece of rudimentary skin attached which formed a hair follicle (arrow).
The work illustrated in this tutorial was supported by the NIH grants: DK 45861, DK 51397, AG 13784, DK 51101, DK 52708, and CA 59831.


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last update: June 1998

Joel Brody (e-mail: jbrody@itsa.ucsf.edu)