How human kidney organoids accelerate discovery
Kidney organoids provide a human cellular context for studying disease mechanisms and evaluating therapeutic strategies before moving toward later-stage preclinical studies.
Support Our Research
Support human kidney innovation for diseases with urgent unmet needs.
Philanthropic support helps launch innovative, early-stage human kidney research that may be too new, high-risk, or translational for traditional funding mechanisms.
Why kidney disease needs new solutions
Human kidney research needs tools that capture human biology.
Many kidney diseases progress silently and have limited treatment options once damage becomes advanced. New human-based research tools are needed to better understand kidney injury, repair, fibrosis, inherited disease, and therapeutic response.
Donation pathway
To support our work, please make gifts through the official Mass General giving system and designate the gift to Dr. Ryuji Morizane or kidney organoid research under Dr. Ryuji Morizane.
Why support matters
Philanthropy can accelerate the work between discovery and translation.
Patient-derived iPSC models
Patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells allow us to generate kidney organoids that carry disease-relevant genetic backgrounds. These models can help us study disease mechanisms and evaluate therapeutic strategies in a human context before moving toward later-stage preclinical studies.
Gene therapy safety and kidney toxicity
Human kidney organoid systems can help explore kidney responses to gene therapy vectors, drug exposure, nephrotoxicity, and injury pathways in a human-relevant context.
AI-assisted imaging and automation
AI-assisted imaging and automated culture workflows can help analyze kidney organoids at larger scale, supporting faster and more quantitative discovery.
Early-stage translational studies
Flexible support can help launch pilot studies, patient-relevant disease models, imaging platforms, trainee projects, and translational research infrastructure.
From promising targets to action
Philanthropic funding can help move promising findings into target validation, therapeutic screening, and collaborative translational studies when conventional funding is difficult to obtain.
Why now
Why now: ARPKD research at a critical moment
Autosomal recessive polycystic kidney disease (ARPKD) is a severe genetic kidney disorder affecting children, often leading to kidney failure in infancy or early childhood. Despite the identification of a promising therapeutic target, progress toward drug development has stalled 窶・primarily due to the lack of adequate funding.
Federal research funding for early-stage translational work has become increasingly limited. Philanthropic support can bridge this gap and allow us to move forward with disease modeling, target validation, and therapeutic screening in human kidney organoids derived from ARPKD patients.
Without this support, research on a disease with no current cure may remain paused 窶・despite the scientific opportunity being within reach.
How to give
Support Dr. Ryuji Morizane's kidney organoid research through official Mass General channels.
To support our research, please make your gift through the official Mass General giving portal. When prompted to designate your gift, please specify:
"Dr. Ryuji Morizane" or "kidney organoid research under Dr. Ryuji Morizane"
If the portal does not list the lab as a selectable option, please enter Dr. Ryuji Morizane's name in the designation or comments field. If you have questions about the designation, please contact us at rmorizane@mgh.harvard.edu and we can coordinate with the Mass General Development Office.
Human-relevant research landscape
Federal agencies and translational research programs increasingly emphasize human-relevant methods, including organoids, microphysiological systems, and computational approaches, where scientifically appropriate.