UK Regenerative Medicine Platform investigator Prof Stuart Forbes successfully regrows liver from stem cells

Written by Curtis Asante

The only cure for advanced liver disease is liver transplantation but the effectiveness of this approach is limited by a shortage in donor organs. Although hepatocyte cell therapy presents a potential alternative approach, hepatocyte isolation and expansion is technically demanding. In a mouse model of hepatocyte senescence and injury, Stuart Forbes and colleagues intrasplenically transplant hepatic progenitor cells (HPCs) and find that the progeny of the transplanted HPCs proliferate long term and functionally regenerate large areas of normal liver parenchyma. These findings may lead to improved future therapeutic approaches for the treatment of human liver disease.

The findings were published in Nature Cell Biology