Liver Tissue Engineering

Abstract

The liver is a very metabolically active organ that has high oxygen and nutrient demands. Even though a healthy liver has the capacity to regenerate, damage to the organ may result in mortality if the hepatic function is not supported. As the current treatment methods for liver failure are limited, tissue engineering has offered tools for the development of alternative treatment options such as provision of temporary support in terms of bioartificial liver device, techniques to sustain long-term differentiated function of adult primary hepatocytes, and development of biomaterials as delivery vehicles of hepatocytes for cell transplantation. Furthermore, these tissue engineering tools have made the development of transplantable liver grafts from a wide range of synthetic and biological materials possible. Liver tissue engineering has also made use of microfabrication techniques to establish culture conditions that support long-term hepatic functions, leading to studies to reconstruct liver tissue from ground up. However, the development of a transplantable liver graft using ground up techniques has not been successful so far, mostly due to the complexity of the liver tissue architecture. Recently, use of whole organ scaffolds obtained by perfusion decellularization has begun to draw interest. This work presents the current knowledge in the field of liver tissue engineering.