Tissue Engineering in Liver Regenerative Medicine: Insights into Novel Translational Technologies

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

• Level A · Stronger Clinical Evidence
• Level B · Emerging clinical evidence with positive signals
• Level C · Early human research exploring benefits
• Level D · Scientific groundwork from lab and animal studies
• Emerging · Emerging topic under active research

Abstract (original English)

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.

Evidence level

Evidence from laboratory and animal studies provides groundwork for understanding mechanisms and potential before human studies continue.

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