Liver tissue engineering: The future of liver therapeutics

Abstract

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.

Toward engineering of vascularized three-dimensional liver tissue equivalents possessing a clinically significant mass

“…To partly overcome the shortcoming of the infusion of hepatocyte suspensions, tissue engineering techniques have been used as recently reviewed by Ohashi [9]. Although there is a limitation in the ratio of substituted functionality of the original liver due to the mass that can be implanted, they are likely to be promising as the first step clinical application of engineered liver tissue and also to give us valuable suggestions to the design and development of much larger liver tissue equivalents.…”

Porogen Templating Processes: An Overview

“…Liver tissue engineering offers a promising therapy option to traditional liver transplantation to treat liver-based inherited metabolic deficiencies and liver failures via seeding hepatocytes into a biodegradable scaffold [137]. He and coworkers [138] employed an indirect SFF process with dual molds to produce chitosan/ gelatin porous scaffolds with predefined internal microstructures.…”

Transplantation of Cryopreserved Fetal Liver Cells Seeded Into Macroporous Alginate-Gelatin Scaffolds in Rats With Liver Failure

“…Исследования показали, что лучшими сайта-ми гетеротопической трансплантации служат бры-жейка и сальник, способствующие васкуляризации тканеинженерных конструкций [12,13].…”