1st liver created from stem cells
In a world first, Japanese scientists have grown human liver tissue from stem cells, paving way for alleviating the critical shortage of donor organs.
Takanori Takebe and Hideki Taniguchi at Yokohama City University showed the generation of vascularised and functional human liver from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) by transplantation of in vitro grown liver buds (rudimentary liver).
The study demonstrates a proof-of-concept that organ bud transplantation offers an alternative approach for treating organ failure by generating a 3-D and vascularised organ.
During the early liver organogenesis, liver progenitor cells delaminate from the foregut endodermal sheet and form a three-dimensional liver bud (LB), a condensed tissue mass that is soon vascularised.
Such large-scale morphogenetic changes depend on the orchestration of signals between liver, mesenchymal and endothelial progenitors prior to blood perfusion.
“These observations led us to hypothesise that three-dimensional (3D) liver bud formation can be mimicked in vitro by culturing hepatic endoderm cells with endothelial and mesenchymal lineages,” researchers said. “Here, we found that although cells were plated on 2D conditions, hiPSC-derived liver progenitos organised into macroscopically visible 3D liver bud (hiPSC-LBs, or “rudimentary liver”) by cultivating with human endothelial cells and human mesenchymal cells.”
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