Latest Hepatocyte Stories

Innovation in scienceThis study establishes a unique system to perform in vivo RNAi screens for genetically dissecting the cellular signalling networks that regulate hepatocyte proliferation during chronic liver damage.Functional in vivo validation studies show that stable knockdown of the candidate gene by different shRNAs can significantly increase the repopulation efficiency of mouse hepatocytes and also increase the regenerative capacity of chronically damaged mouse livers.Such detailed...

Innovation in scienceStudy shows, for the first time, the successful reprogramming of diseased human hepatocytes into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC).Results also found differentiation into mature hepatocytes was more efficient than that with fibroblast-derived iPSCs.The generation of diseased hepatocyte-derived human iPSC lines provides a good basis for the study of liver disease pathogenesis.Such technology could give a potentially unlimited reservoir of cells for the treatment of...

Numerous patients suffering from chronic liver diseases are currently receiving inadequate treatment due to the lack of organs donated for transplantation. However, hepatocytes derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) could offer an alternative for the future. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin compared hepatocytes from embryonic stem cells with hepatocytes from iPS cells and found that their gene expression is very similar. Nevertheless, in...

YOKOHAMA, Japan, January 4, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- ReproCELL, Inc. (CEO: Chikafumi Yokoyama PhD) announces today that the company will enter a collaborative R&D agreement with the National Institute of Biomedical Innovation (NIBIO; Director General: Koichi Yamanishi; Osaka, Japan), which could offer new hepatocyte derived from human iPS (induced pluripotent stem) cells used for an effective in-vitro drug screening for hepatic toxicity and liver metabolism. ReproCELL is a...

Weill Cornell Medical College studies lay groundwork for new treatments for regenerating liver and bone marrowThe liver's unique ability among organs to regenerate itself has been little understood. Now Weill Cornell Medical College scientists have shed light on how the liver restores itself by demonstrating that endothelial cells -- the cells that form the lining of blood vessels -- play a key role.The results of their study are published today in the online edition of the journal Nature,...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Oct. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Beta-Pro LLC, announced today that it has expanded its operations to accommodate increasing demands from pharmaceutical drug discovery and research institutes in the $2 billion hepatocyte market. The human cellular sciences company now manages extensive laboratory facilities in the University of Virginia Research Park in Charlottesville, Virginia. "Beta-Pro has already established a foothold in the human pancreatic islet cell market and has...

CHICAGO, Sept. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Celsis In Vitro, Inc. (Celsis IVT) announced today that the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago has entered a preliminary injunction against CellzDirect Inc., Invitrogen Corporation, and Life Technologies (the Defendants) due to their infringement of U.S. Patent No. 7,604,929 (the Liverpool(TM) patent). Life Technologies of Carlsbad, California (Nasdaq: LIFE) is the parent of Invitrogen and CellzDirect. The...

Discarded livers have potential to be reengineered into usable replacement organsA team led by researchers from the Center for Engineering in Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has developed a technique that someday may allow growth of transplantable replacement livers. In their report that will be published in Nature Medicine and is receiving early online release, the investigators describe using the structural tissue of rat livers as scaffolding for the growth of tissue...

A research team from the National Taiwan University Hospital has evaluated the efficiency of transplanted hepatocyte (liver) cells in animal models severely damaged by two kinds of chemical toxicity to see whether and how transplanted hepatocytes were able to efficiently repopulate the toxin-induced, severely damaged livers. The results of this study are published in the current double issue of Cell Transplantation (18:10/11) and are freely available on-line at...

Embryonic stem (ES) cells, known for their capacity to proliferate indefinitely and differentiate into almost all types of cells including hepatocytes, have raised the hope of cellular replacement therapy for liver failure. There have been several protocols available for hepatic fate specification from ES cells, however, most of the protocols currently used result in low yield or purity of functional hepatocytes. Valproic acid (VPA), a histone deacetylase inhibitor, has been demonstrated to...