Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a common disease, with an increasing incidence, and critically ill patients with AKI are usually associated with a high mortality. Recently, novel therapeutic approaches have been developed to change this dismal prognosis in patients with AKI, among which cell therapy has developed into a new method to treat a vast array of clinical disorders. For safety reasons, extracorporeal cell therapy may be a better choice, which not only replaces the function of injured cells or modulates the pathophysiological processes, but also provides an immunoprotective barrier. This review focused on different extracorporeal cell therapies with renal epithelial cells, granulocytes, and vascular endothelial cells. Extracorporeal cell therapy with renal epithelial cells or granulocytes has a significant positive effect on the survival of patients with AKI, compared with the conventional continuous renal replacement treatment. The authors had developed an endothelial cell therapy system, which could significantly improve the cardiovascular performance, organ function, and survival in animals with sepsis. These advances will result in an improvement of the current dismal prognosis of patients suffering from AKI.