PKD-InVent (PKD In Vitro Center) is dedicated to the development of polycystic kidney disease (PKD) organoids and related in-a-dish technologies. The Center, founded in 2025 with a grant from the National Institutes of Health, builds upon our research-enabling discovery demonstrating that human mini-kidney structures grown in a petri dish can exhibit symptoms of polycystic kidney disease (‘PKD in a dish’).
Why it matters: Mini-kidney technology remains difficult for many investigators to access, and mini-kidney PKD also differs in certain respects from PKD in a living person. Our Center’s members, who are world leaders in this area, seek to solve these challenges. This will greatly enable the community to use the technology to make research breakthroughs in our understanding of how PKD actually works and how it might be treated in a curative fashion.
PKD-InVent consists of three Cores: an Administrative Core, an Organoid Products and Services Core, and a Resource Development Core, with Dr. Freedman serving as the overall Director of the Center. It is one of six PKD Centers within the PKD Research Resource Consortium, along with the consortium’s Central Coordinating Site. We are honored to be a part of this prestigious program, which endeavors to create tools that advance PKD research and share them broadly with the research community.
