By Nancy Lapid

(Reuters) -This is an excerpt of the Health Rounds newsletter, where we present latest medical studies on Tuesdays and Thursdays. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox for free sign up here.

Researchers are a step closer to learning how congenital kidney defects develop in the fetus and how they might be prevented, a new report shows.

For the first time, they can watch miniature human fetal kidneys develop in test tubes over periods that simulate the course of a pregnancy.

So-called kidney organoids have been grown in test tubes before, but only starting with pluripotent stem cells – immature cells found in early embryos that can differentiate into any cell type in the body but without the tissue-specific characteristics that would allow them to perform an organ’s

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