The Nigerian Medical Association has commended a team of researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in the United States of America, for growing a functioning rat kidney in the laboratory.
The national president of the association, Dr. Osahon Enabulele, in a statement on Monday, said the study, published in the latest edition of Nature Medicine, offered hope for people suffering from chronic renal disease.
Rats’ kidneys were successfully transplanted, with evidence of a near natural performance in a recipient rat.
Enabulele said this discovery, which aims at solving the challenges of getting kidneys for patients with kidney failure, would ease the challenges of getting organ donors.
He said, “NMA salutes the team of researchers for their altruistic efforts and breakthrough. We are of the opinion that a lot more work still needs to be done to ascertain if it can be successfully replicated in humans. It is only then that we can say uhuru.”
He also called on researchers in the nation’s tertiary institution’s to do advanced work on their findings.