Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author s and source are credited. In vitro production of human hepatocytes is of primary importance in basic research, pharmacotoxicology and biotherapy of liver diseases.
We have developed a protocol of differentiation of human embryonic stem cells ES towards hepatocyte-like cells ES-Hep.
The data revealed that after 21 days of differentiation, ES-Hep are representative of fetal hepatocytes at less than 20 weeks of gestation. The glucocorticoid receptor pathway was functional in ES-Hep. Extending protocols of differentiation to 4 weeks did not improve cell maturation. It therefore seems that ES-Hep reach a better level of differentiation than NPE-Hep and that these cells use different lineage pathways towards the hepatic phenotype.
The online version of this article doi Keywords: Human embryonic stem cells, Adult hepatic progenitors, Hepatic differentiation, Hepatocyte, Maturation, Lentivirus vector, Detoxification. Orthotopic liver transplantation is currently the only means to efficiently cure liver failure regardless of origin drugs, alcohol or viral infection. However, liver donor scarcity strongly limits this approach. New strategies to produce human hepatocytes are therefore needed.
These are based on the proliferative capacity of human embryonic stem hES cells and adequate protocols of in vitro differentiation towards mature hepatocytes. Moreover, due to the wide range of functions performed by the liver, hepatocytes derived from hES cells ES-Hep can be a useful tool for basic research and pharmacotoxicology.
