The kidney regulates regeneration, but don’t upset the balance

Better understanding of the cellular pathophysiological process undergoing kidney injury and repair will be hopefully result in the design of more targeted therapies to prevent injury, hasten repair, and minimize chronic progressive kidney diseases. The relevance of CSF-1 signalling for kidney organ development and inflammatory disease has been highlighted by numerous studies. Interestingly, there are different functions of CSF-1 in acute kidney injury versus chronic kidney disease (CKD). Within CKD, an enhanced expression of CSF-1 results in more damage, and thus disruption of the CSF-1/CSF-1R interaction/activation is protective. A reverse scenario is seen during acute kidney injury, where inhibition of CSF-1 leads to delayed recovery of kidney function and less regenerative (M2) macrophages. However, the major factor to stimulate epithelial cell repair and the cell type(s) generating the factor in response to acute kidney injury remained unclear. In their recent report Wang et al. used a specific CSF-1 knockout in the proximal tubular cells, induced acute kidney injury, and analyzed the recovery of kidney function. They nicely demonstrated a strong positive effect of renal and proximal tubular secreted CSF-1. It mediates the differentiation of infiltrated monocytes into M2 macrophages, also denoted as reparative macrophages. Mice with a deletion of CSF-1 within the proximal tubular cells exhibited a delayed recovery from acute kidney injury. These findings may pave the path to therapeutic intervention in acute kidney injury.