Mesenchymal Stem Cells as a Potential Source of Hepatocyte like Cells

Amira Othman

doi:10.4172/2329-8820.1000166

Abstract

The field of regenerative medicine is growing up rapidly in the last decades, the usage of cellular therapy such as stem cells start to grasp attention in many experimental and even clinical trial. In this article, we mainly concentrate on the potentiality of the mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) to differentiate into hepatocyte like cells, which can overcome the problem of donor’s shortage. MSC have been use lately in many in vitro and in vivo experiments, and have showed great capacity of multilinage differentiation, interestingly they have the capacity to differentiate into hepatocyte like cells. Currently many clinical trials started to involve the usage of self-MSC as a novel therapy for hepatic complication such as fibrosis or cirrhosis, which showed promising results in treatment of hepatic patients. MSC can be injected in hepatic patient to replace the cirrhotic liver, which gives a real hope for the hepatic patients as a reliable source for regeneration.

Highlights

Research in the field of stem cells grew out by the findings of Ernest A
Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSCs) are stem cells that have the capability to differentiate into muscle, bone, cartilage, ligament, tendon, and adipose tissue, mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) can participate in the regeneration process of the these tissues
Human umbilical cord Blood (HUCB) derived MSC shows high differentiation potentiality into hepatocytes after four weeks of culture media enriched with hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) together with either OSM or FGF-4 [24]

Summary

Introduction

Research in the field of stem cells grew out by the findings of Ernest A. Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSCs) are stem cells that have the capability to differentiate into muscle, bone, cartilage, ligament, tendon, and adipose tissue, MSC can participate in the regeneration process of the these tissues Serum free media augmented with and L-ascorbate and dexamethasone (Dex) were found to be crucial for colonies formation from stem cell population derived from bone marrow. These MSCs express cell markers such as STRO-1+ and STRO-1+ /VCAM-1+ whereas EGF and platelet derived growth factor (PDGF) were found to play a pivotal role in colony growth support [21]. In another study human multipotent adult progenitor, cells (MAPC) have been isolated in a serum free media containing endothelial growth factor (EGF), PDGF and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) with dexamethasone, ascorbic acid [22] (Figure 2 and Table 1)

Phenotype

Findings

Conclusion