Journal of Cell Science 115, e1302-e1302 (2002)
© 2002 The Company of Biologists Limited
Liver stem cells
Transplantation of hepatocytes is a potentially very powerful therapeutic
approach given their remarkable ability to regenerate the liver. The lack of
proliferation of cultured hepatocytes, their poor viability after freezing and
the scarcity of donors, however, have limited the application of the
technique. To get around these problems, Sanjeev Gupta and co-workers have
isolated epithelial progenitor/stem cells from foetal liver (see
p. 2679). They show that these
cells proliferate stably in culture for >40 divisions and coexpress markers
characteristic of different liver cell lineages. The authors also show that
the progenitor cells recover well after cryopreservation and differentiate to
form mature hepatocytes when introduced into mice. Moreover, they demonstrate
that the cells integrate into liver parenchyma and proliferate in vivo
following liver injury. The cultured progenitor cells also successfully
express exogenous genes introduced in adenoviral/lentiviral vectors. Gupta and
co-workers therefore conclude that they represent an effective resource for
both cell transplantation and gene therapy.
Related articles in JCS:
- Isolation of human progenitor liver epithelial cells with extensive replication capacity and differentiation into mature hepatocytes
- Harmeet Malhi, Adil N. Irani, Singh Gagandeep, and Sanjeev Gupta
JCS 2002 115: 2679-2688.
[Abstract]
[Full Text]
