Ex vivo culture and separation of functional renal cells.

The following methods outline the procedures for isolating primary renal cells from kidney tissue via enzymatic digestion, followed by their culture, harvest, and then fractionation of renal subpopulations from primary culture. The current methods describe procedures to sub-fractionate biologically active cells that have been used to treat and stabilize renal function in models of chronic kidney disease (Kelley et al. Am J Physiol Renal Physiol 299(5):F1026-F1039, 2010).