Human stem cells help regenerate liver function in mice

Researchers have transplanted derived functional hepatocytes from human stem cells into mice with acute liver injury, and found that these liver cells functioned normally and increased survival of the rodents.
This promising advance in the development of cell-based therapies to treat liver failure resulting from injury or disease relied on the development of scalable, reproducible methods to produce stem cell-derived hepatocytes in bio-reactors, researchers said.
Massoud Vosough and coauthors demonstrate, in an article described in the journal Stem Cells and Development, a large-scale, integrated manufacturing strategy for generating functional hepatocytes in a single suspension culture grown in a scalable stirred bio-reactor.

Researchers described the method used for scale-up, differentiation of the pluripotent stem cells into liver cells, and characterisation and purification of the hepatocytes based on their physiological properties and the expression of liver cell bio-markers.
The researchers "developed a system for mass manufacture of stem cell derived hepatocytes in numbers that would be useful for clinical application," creating possibilities for future "immune matched cell based therapies," said David C Hay from the University of Edinburgh, UK.
Such approaches could be used to correct mutated genes in stem cell populations prior to differentiation and transplantation, Hay said.