Miniature Human Liver Grown in Mice

Transplanted "liver buds" self-organized to grow into functional organs, staving off death in mice with liver failure

By Monya Baker and Nature magazine

This stem cell approach may one day help patients waiting for liver transplants. Image: Flickr/Tareq Salahuddin

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Transplanting tiny 'liver buds' constructed from human stem cells restores liver function in mice, researchers have found. Although preliminary, the results offer a potential path towards developing treatments for the thousands of patients awaiting liver transplants every year.

The liver buds, approximately 4 mm across, staved off death in mice with liver failure, the researchers report this week in Nature. The transplanted structures also took on a range of liver functions secreting liver-specific proteins and producing human-specific metabolites. But perhaps most notably, these buds quickly hooked up with nearby blood vessels and continued to grow after transplantation.

The results are preliminary but promising, says Valerie Gouon-Evans, who studies liver development and regeneration at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. This is a very novel thing, she says. Because the liver buds are supported by the hosts blood system, transplanted cells can continue to proliferate and perform liver functions.

However, she says, the transplanted animals need to be observed for several more months to see whether the cells begin to degenerate or form tumors.

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Miniature Human Liver Grown in Mice