Want to know more about kidney transplants?

These two bean shaped organs the size of a fist live just below the rib cage on either side of the spine and make up one third of the urinary tract. With the ureter and bladder, the kidneys filter waste from blood and pump it out of the body by way of creating urine. Without your kidneys, the balance of water, salts and minerals in your blood would topple and nerves, muscles, and tissues could not work correctly. For more general information on the kidneys, read on here.

So how do kidneys do all that filtration? Specific kidney cells, called nephrons, work as tiny filters about one million strong in each kidney. These cells are the key to removing unnecessary or harmful compounds and pumping needed compounds back into the blood.

Deeper understanding of nephron cells and the kidneys in total have created new potential treatments in the field. 3D printing with the patient's own cells would create kidneys (and potentially hearts and other complex organs, too!) that would not be rejected by patient's immune systems. This would limit the need for immunosuppressive drugs in the future. You can read more about 3D printed organs here.

Scientists have worked on bioengineering pigs with organs that could be accepted by a human immune system. This process is called xenotransplantation, and you can read more about that here.

Artificial kidneys and artificial nephrons are also being developed. A wearable kidney, which functions essentially as a mini-dialysis machine, could be an alternative to traditional dialysis in the future, for those awaiting transplant or for those who aren't good candidates for the surgery. A bio-artificial implant is also being researched, which would work at the cellular level as engineered nephrons.

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