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Clinical application of stem cell in patients with end-stage liver disease: progress and challenges
Open accessAbstract
End-stage liver disease (ESLD) is life-threatening disease worldwide, and patients with ESLD should be referred to liver transplantation (LT). However, the use of LT is limited by the lacking liver source, high cost and organ rejection. Thus, other alternative options have been explored. Stem cell therapy may be a potential alternative for ESLD treatment. With the potential of self-renewal and differentiation, both hepatic and extrahepatic stem cells have attracted a lot of attention. Among them, multipotent stem cells are most widely studies owing to their characteristics. Multipotent stem cells mainly consist of two subpopulations: hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). Accumulating evidences have proved that either bone marrow (BM)-derived HSCs mobilized by granulocyte colony-stimulating factor or MSCs transplantation can improve the biochemical indicators of patients with ESLD. However, there are some challenges to be resolved before stem cells widely used in clinic, including the best stem cell source, the optimal route for stem cells transplantation, and the dose and frequency of stem cell injected. The purpose of this review is to discuss the potential of stem cell in liver diseases, particularly, the clinical progress and challenges of multipotent stem cells in the field of ESLD.
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“When the proliferation of liver parenchymal cells is hampered, especially in advanced fibrosis, LPCs may become activated and differentiate into mature hepatocytes and cholangiocytes, thereby facilitating repopulation and improving liver function [20, 41].”
From Mechanisms, efficacy, and future perspectives of cellular-based therapies for liver fibrosis/cirrhosis: focusing on mesenchymal stromal cells (2025) · cites this paper as [41]
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Long-Term Culture of Genome-Stable Bipotent Stem Cells from Adult Human Liver
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Liver organoids: from basic research to therapeutic applications
Prior, N., Inacio, P., & Huch, M. (2019) · Gut · doi:10.1136/gutjnl-2019-319256 · Cited by 356
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Pan, X., Gao, T., & Wang, B. (2025) · Cell & Bioscience · doi:10.1186/s13578-025-01520-9 · Cited by 2
Metadata
- Authors
- Tao, Y.-C., & Chen, E.-Q.
- Affiliations
- Sichuan University (CN)
- Corresponding author
- Chen, En-Qiang
- ORCID
- Chen, En-Qiang
- Venue
- Annals of Translational Medicine
- Publisher
- AME Publishing Company
- Published
- 2020-04
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 564-564
- ISSN
- 2305-5839 (ISSN-L)
- 2305-5847
- PMC
- PMC7347777
- OpenAlex
- W3016132356
- Cited by
- 15
- References
- 5
- Citations by year
- 2025: 5 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 3 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 1
- FWCI
- 0.29
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by-nc-nd
- Locations
- Annals of Translational Medicine (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Department of Science and Technology of Sichuan Province (2019YFS0209)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Cell Biology › Mesenchymal stem cell research
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Hematology › Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Hepatology › Liver physiology and pathology
- Keywords
- end-stage liver disease, stem cell therapy, multipotent stem cells, hematopoietic stem cells, mesenchymal stem cells, bone marrow-derived stem cells, granulocyte colony-stimulating factor, stem cell transplantation, liver transplantation alternatives
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