Life support of artificial liver: development of a bioartificial liver to treat liver failure.
In recent years there has been a particular focus on research regarding tissue engineering targeting the liver, especially in terms of what types of cells and extracellular matrices should be organized and in what type of environments to create an artificial liver, i.e., a life-saving organ. The ideal is to use healthy human liver cells as a source of cells for such research, but there is an extreme shortage of human-donor livers that can be used for cell isolation. Therefore, we are presently working on the differentiation of embryonic stem cells into liver cells as well as reversibly immortalized human liver cell lines that can be cultured in large quantities and at low cost. We are also working on the development of a bioartificial liver (BAL) using such cells as a source. Herein, we introduce our findings on the current status of BAL development.
Kobayashi
Naoya
N
Department of Surgery, Okayama University Graduate School of Medicine and Dentistry, Okayama, Japan. immortal@md.okayama-u.ac.jp
D000818:Animals; D002460:Cell Line; D017690:Cell Transplantation / Q000379:methods; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D004867:Equipment Design; D006084:Graft Rejection; D006085:Graft Survival; D022781:Hepatocytes / Q000637:transplantation; D006801:Humans; D017093:Liver Failure / Q000601:surgery*; D019164:Liver, Artificial; D023822:Tissue Engineering / Q000379:methods*