Human liver tissue engineering

The Lavik group functionalized PEG scaffolds with PLL to add sites for cell adhesion (a limit of this type of polymers), and the neural stem cells seeded inside these scaffolds survived and were able to differentiate into mature phenotypes. Finally, PEG scaffolds have also been investigated in combination with human MSCs for adipose tissue engineering and with mouse embryonic liver cells to generate hepatoc5des for liver tissue engineering, showing the versatility of such scaffolds. 

Risbud, M. V., E. Karamuk, R. Moser, and J. Mayer. 2002. Hydrogel-coated textile scaffolds as three-dimensional growth support for human umbihcal vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) possibilities as coculture system in liver tissue engineering. Cell Transplant 11 369-377. 

Salerno et al. cocultured human hepatocytes with human umbilical vein ECs (HUVECs) on a polyetheretherketone PU membrane to promote vascularization of an in vitro engineered liver tissue [102]. There was improved hepatocyte function and the formation of luminal structures occurred within 3 days of coculture on the PU versus hepatocyte-only samples [102]. Another study demonstrated that coculturing bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stromal cells with hepatocytes greatly reduced the secretion of stress enzymes by the hepatocytes and that the cells attached better to nanoflber PU versus unstructured PU [103]. 

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