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ShareAug. 26, 2010 — Great excitement greeted the discovery a few years ago that certain cells from mice and humans could be reprogrammed to become inducible pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), as they hold promise for cell replacement therapy and modeling human disease.
Two independent research groups -- one led by Ludovic Vallier, at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, and the other led by Holger Willenbring, at the University of California San Francisco -- have now shown that both possibilities are true for iPS cell-derived liver cells known as hepatocytes.
In the first study, Vallier and colleagues generated iPS cells from patients with various inherited diseases of the liver. These cells were then cultured in a defined way to generate hepatocytes, which were found to recapitulate key features of the diseases affecting the patients from which they were derived. While this study indicates that iPS cells can be used to model diseases of the liver, Willenbring and colleagues showed that iPS cell-derived hepatocytes have both the functional and proliferative capabilities needed for liver regeneration in mice.
In an accompanying commentary, Linda Greenbaum, at Thomas Jefferson University School of Medicine, Philadelphia, describes how these studies have extended our understanding of the potential for iPS cells to be used for cell replacement therapy and modeling human disease.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Journal of Clinical Investigation, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal References:
- Silvia Espejel, Garrett R. Roll, K. John Mclaughlin, Andrew Y. Lee, Jenny Y. Zhang, Diana J. Laird, Keisuke Okita, Shinya Yamanaka, and Holger Willenbring. Induced pluripotent stem cell–derived hepatocytes have the functional and proliferative capabilities needed for liver regeneration in mice. J Clin Invest, August 25, 2010 DOI: 10.1172/JCI43267
- S. Tamir Rashid, Sebastien Corbineau, Nick Hannan, Stefan J. Marciniak, Elena Miranda, Graeme Alexander, Isabel Huang-Doran, Julian Griffin, Lars Ahrlund-Richter, Jeremy Skepper, Robert Semple, Anne Weber, David A. Lomas, Ludovic Vallier. Modeling inherited metabolic disorders of the liver using human induced pluripotent stem cells. Journal of Clinical Investigation, 25 August 2010 DOI: 10.1172/JCI43122
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
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