The Stem Cell Podcast

The Stem Cell Podcast


Ep. 302: “Kidney Organoids” Featuring Dr. Zhongwei Li

August 19, 2025

Guest:

Dr. Zhongwei Li is an Associate Professor at the University of Southern California. His lab focuses on kidney organogenesis with translational applications of kidney regeneration and disease modeling. He talks about his work on PSC-derived nephron progenitors and drug discovery applications for polycystic kidney disease. (40:12)

Featured Products and Resources: The Stem Cell Science Round Up

Chemically Induced Embryo Founder Cells: A small-molecule-only approach was used to induce mouse embryonic stem cells into embryo founder cells, which generated a mouse embryo model. (1:45)

Transgene-Free Embryo Models: Scientists generated transgene-free stem cell-based embryo models solely from mouse naïve PSCs. (13:25)

Hypoimmune CAR T Cells: Allogeneic hypoimmune CAR T cells do not induce an immune response in patients. (21:15)

Reconstructing PSC-Islets: PSC-islets comprising all five endocrine subtypes were reconstructed and transplanted into mice. (32:03)

Image courtesy of Dr. Zhongwei Li

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