Liver Tissue Development and Engineering

The liver plays a vital role in human health, including the detoxification of foreign substances. We use stem cells to grow liver cells in the laboratory. The stem cells we use are called human embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells. The attraction of using these cell populations is their indefinite growth in in the lab and their ability to form all the cells found in the human body. We have developed reliable methods for growing the liver cells and spheres. We believe our stem cell derived liver tissue has an important part to play modelling human disease in a petridish and improving the efficiency of human drug development. Moreover, in the future stem cell derived liver cells may provide an alternative source of tissue to treat human liver failure and disease.