胚胎干细胞和诱导多能干细胞源性肝细胞样细胞研究进展

摘要

The treatment of end-stage liver diseases such as cirrhosis, primary liver cancer, metabolic liver diseases is becoming a serious issue of healthcare worldwide. Hepatocyte transplantation (HT) is a promising alternative treatment for these diseases. However, because of limited availability and difficulty of in vitro proliferation of hepatocytes, the clinical application of HT is severely limited. Research on stem cells opens up a whole new approach for these problems.Hepatocyte-like cells (HLCs) derived from embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) provides a suitable source of hepatocytes for cell replacement therapy in clinics, and may have potential roles in drug evaluation and basic studies of hepatogenesis. This article reviewed the advances in study of directed differentiation of ESCs and iPSCs to HLCs in vitro.%肝硬化、原发性肝癌、代谢性肝病等终末期肝病的治疗正成为全球棘手的医疗问题.肝细胞移植(HT)有望成为终末期肝病的替代疗法,但肝细胞来源紧缺、体外增殖困难等限制了HT的临床应用.干细胞的发现为解决上述问题提供了新的思路.胚胎干细胞(ESCs)和诱导多能干细胞(iPSCs)分化为肝细胞样细胞(HLCs)的研究,可为临床细胞替代治疗提供合适的细胞来源,亦在药物评估和肝脏发生等基础研究方面起重要作用.本文就近年ESCs和iPSCs体外定向分化为HLCs的研究进展作一综述.