Unilateral Nephrectomy (UNx)
Unilateral nephrectomy involves the removal of one kidney, resulting in a controlled ~50% reduction in renal mass. This procedure provides a stable and reproducible method for modulating renal function while maintaining high survival and low variability.
Rather than modeling advanced disease in isolation, UNx is most powerful when used as a preconditioning or sensitization approach, enabling the study of kidney injury in combination with additional disease drivers.
Common applications:
- Sensitizing animals to metabolic or dietary challenges (e.g., high-fat or western diet)
- Enhancing susceptibility to hypertension or cardiorenal stress models
- Supporting multi-hit study designs to investigate CKD risk factors and progression
- Investigate early-stage renal adaptation mechanisms
- Evaluating early functional changes, including hyperfiltration and compensatory hypertrophy
Key advantages:
- Highly reproducible with consistent surgical outcomes
- Low variability and high survival rates
- Compatible with a broad range of mouse and rat strains, including genetically engineered model
- Flexible integration with diet-induced, pharmacologic, or genetic disease models
- Enables controlled study of kidney function within complex, multi-organ disease settings
UNx is particularly useful when the goal is to model early physiological changes rather than overt disease progression.
