UCSF Scientists Develop Cell Reprogramming Technique to Generate Hepatocytes for Therapeutic Use

Regenerative Medicine Research News:

The liver possesses some capacity to regenerate or heal itself after injury. When the liver is damaged beyond this capacity, a whole-liver transplant is the preferred treatment of many medical professionals, but the demand for donor livers far exceeds supply. Thus, scientists are developing regenerative medicine therapies to treat damaged livers.

Human hepatocytes have been generated in vitro from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), but these cells do not adequately proliferate and function after transplantation into mouse models of liver damage for therapeutic success.

In a study published in Nature Feb 23, 2014, UCSF scientists describe how they developed an induced multipotent progenitor cell (iMPC) reprogramming technique to differentiate
human hepatocytes from human fibroblasts. Instead of allowing the cells to develop pluripotency, as occurs with iPSC techniques, the researchers differentiated the iMPC cells into endodermal progenitor cells (iMPC-EPCs) before further inducing them into hepatocytes  (iMPC-Heps).

After transplantation into mouse models of liver damage, the iMPC-Heps showed greater repopulation levels in mouse livers than studies using iPSC protocols, marking some progress towards autologous liver cell therapy.

Zhu, S., Rezvani, M., Harbell, J., Mattis, A., Wolfe, A.R., Benet, L.Z., Willenbring, H, and Sheng Ding. Mouse liver repopulation with hepatocytes generated from human fibroblasts. Nature (2014). doi:10.1038/nature13020

Read the study at Nature.com: www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13020.html