Abstract
Organ and tissue shortage are known as a crucially important public health problem as unfortunately a small percentage of patients receive transplants. In the context of emerging regenerative medicine, researchers are trying to regenerate and replace different organs and tissues such as the liver, heart, skin, and kidney. Liver tissue engineering (TE) enables us to reproduce and restore liver functions, fully or partially, which could be used in the treatment of acute or chronic liver disorders and/or generate an appropriate functional organ which can be transplanted or employed as an extracorporeal device. In this regard, a variety of techniques (e.g., fabrication technologies, cell-based technologies, microfluidic systems and, extracorporeal liver devices) could be applied in tissue engineering in liver regenerative medicine. Common TE techniques are based on allocating stem cell-derived hepatocyte-like cells or primary hepatocytes within a three-dimensional structure which leads to the improvement of their survival rate and functional phenotype. Taken together, new findings indicated that developing liver tissue engineering-based techniques could pave the way for better treatment of liver-related disorders. Herein, we summarized novel technologies used in liver regenerative medicine and their future applications in clinical settings.
Highlights
The liver plays a crucial role in different physiological functions such as protein, carbohydrate, and lipid metabolism, detoxification of xenobiotics, storage of glycogen and vital biomolecules, production and excretion of bile and cholesterol compounds, synthesis of albumin and clotting factors, ammonia detoxification and more [1]
3D bio-printing is a promising technology in the field of bio-artificial organ generation, which may overcome various limitations encountered in different models [66] and improve maturation of hepatocyte like cells (HLCs) [75]
Orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) has been known as the only effective treatment in end-stage liver diseases, limited by the shortage of donated organs
Summary
The liver plays a crucial role in different physiological functions such as protein, carbohydrate, and lipid metabolism, detoxification of xenobiotics, storage of glycogen and vital biomolecules, production and excretion of bile and cholesterol compounds, synthesis of albumin and clotting factors, ammonia detoxification and more [1]. In this regard, failure of liver functions may lead to a wide range of liver dysfunction conditions with different levels of severity, morbidity or mortality [2]. Extracorporeal liver devices and in vitro and in vivo models used in liver TE were discussed
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