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Liver tissue engineering: The future of liver therapeutics
Author(s) -
Ohashi Kazuo
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
hepatology research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.123
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 1872-034X
pISSN - 1386-6346
DOI - 10.1111/j.1872-034x.2008.00431.x
Subject(s) - tissue engineering , liver tissue , in vivo , regenerative medicine , liver disease , hepatocyte , medicine , liver failure , bioartificial liver device , bioinformatics , liver function , computational biology , biology , stem cell , biomedical engineering , in vitro , microbiology and biotechnology , biochemistry
The applications derived from the concept of tissue engineering have spurred significant interest in the field of regenerative medicine as novel, next generation therapies. Due to a lack of treatment modalities for patients suffering from many forms of liver diseases, recent studies have touted that engineering hepatic tissues de novo in culture may be a viable method to address this therapeutic void. Liver tissue engineering is a new and emerging field in which a functional liver system is created in vivo using isolated hepatocytes and/or other cells types to treat acute and chronic liver diseases. Under circumstances in which a small, but functional liver tissue system could be engineered to provide the equivalent biological function proportional to a few percent of a normal, well‐functioning liver, it would be possible to correct many disease phenotypes as a result of various forms of inherited metabolic deficiencies. Alternatively, hepatic tissues can be engineered rapidly to produce therapeutic effects allowing this approach to become an effective modality in the treatment of acute liver failure. Strategies to achieve high levels of hepatocyte survival and the development of methods to engineer a functional liver system in vivo will be discussed in this review.