Scientists are after discovering that they can reprogramme adult skin cells in order to make the most mature human kidney yet to be grown in a lab.  

Although the kidneys can't perform the functions of a fully-formed adult kidney, it is hoped that the breakthrough will someday be a new way to treat people with kidney failure. 

According to Nature, the mini-kidneys develop just as normal kidneys do in an embryo. 

"Ultimately we hope we might be able to scale this up so we can maybe bioengineer an entire organ," said lead researcher Professor Melissa Little.

"The short-term goal is to actually use this method to make little replicas of the developing kidney and use that to test whether drugs are toxic to the kidney.”

The researchers reprogrammed adult fibroblasts with a combination of chemicals called "growth factors" to become embryonic cells, which can change into any cell in the body. 

By tweaking their growth factor recipe, the researchers were able to grow these cells into larger and more complex kidneys.

"These kidneys have something like 10 or 12 different cell types in them … all from the one starting stem cell," said Professor Little.

"It's starting to mature now and the cell types are starting to do more of the functions of the final kidney."

While it is still early days, the method could provide a practical way to study inherited forms of kidney disease, the researchers said.