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Scientists at the Medical Collge of wisconsin-Madison have successfully produced liver cells from patients' skin cells. They repeated the experiment of James Thomson and found a type of stem cell which could generate the liver cells.
The scientists took the skin cells and reprogrammed those to form a regenerative tissue. They saw that, those skin derived cells, pluripotent stem cells had the capacity to develop almost 200 cell types in the human body including the liver cells.
Stephen A. Duncan, professor in human and molecular genetics, Medical College of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (MCW-M) led the project along with postdoctoral fellow Karim Si-Tayeb, and graduate student Fallon Noto.
Duncan said, "This is a crucial step forward towards developing therapies that can potentially replace the need for scarce liver transplants, currently the only treatment for most advanced liver disease."
The researchers are hopeful that this finding can be used to diagnose and treat potentially hazardous metabolic liver diseases.
Liver is the master organ of the body controlling most of the metabolic functions like insulin secretion, digestion and detoxification. Once this is affected, it can result in a wide range of disorders including diabetes and atherosclerosis.
Liver malfunction can be due to infections like Hepatitis, genetic mutation or excessive alcohol consumption.
