Lab-grown functional human liver cells to aid treatment
Researchers have developed a new approach to rapidly expand the number of human liver cells in the laboratory without losing their unique metabolic function.
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"This is the holy grail of liver research," said the study's lead author Yaakov Nahmias from Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.
The research could help advance a variety of liver-related research and applications, from studying drug toxicity to creating bio-artificial liver support for patients awaiting transplantations.
"Our technology will enable thousands of laboratories to study fatty liver disease, viral hepatitis, drug toxicity and liver cancer at a fraction of the current cost," Nahmias noted.
Thus far, attempts to expand human hepatocytes - cells that comprise 85 percent of the liver - in the laboratory resulted in immortalised cancer cells with little metabolic function.
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The scarce supply of human hepatocytes and this inability to expand them without losing function is a major bottleneck for scientific, clinical and pharmaceutical development.
The new method, described as the upcyte process, allows expanding human hepatocytes, resulting in a quadrillion cells from each liver isolation, compared to only a billion cells that can be isolated from a healthy organ.
"The approach is revolutionary," said Joris Braspenning from Germany-based biotechnoloy company Upcyte Technologies.
"Its strength lies in our ability to generate liver cells from multiple donors, enabling the study of patient-to-patient variability and idiosyncratic toxicity," Braspenning said. IANS
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