Scientists grow a miniature artificial human liver

COSMOS magazine

derrenbrown.co.uk

A miniature artificial human liver has been grown by British scientists in a major medical breakthrough this week.

LONDON: A miniature artificial human liver has been grown by British scientists in a major medical breakthrough this week.

The organ, which is about the size of a thumbnail, was grown using stem cells in blood taken from umbilical cords.

It is hoped such mini-livers could be used to test drugs – reducing the need for animal experiments – to help repair damaged livers and eventually to produce entire organs for lifesaving transplants.

Colin McGuckin, a professor specialising in regenerative medicine, made the breakthrough with Nico Forraz at Newcastle University in northeast England.

While other scientists have created liver cells, the Newcastle team are the first to create sizeable sections of tissue from stem cells from the umbilical cord.

The pair extracted blood from the umbilical cords of newborn babies. They were then placed in a ‘bioreactor’ developed by the U.S. space agency NASA, which mimics the effects of weightlessness. This allowed the cells to multiply more quickly. Chemicals and hormones were then added to encourage the stem cells to turn into liver tissue.

“We take the stem cells from the umbilical cord blood and make small mini-livers,” said McGuckin. “We then give them to pharmaceutical companies and they can use them to test new drugs on.

“When a drug company is developing a new drug it first tests it on human cells and then tests it on animals before beginning trials on humans,” he said.

He added that: “Moving from testing on animals to humans is a massive leap and there is still a risk. But by using the mini-livers we have developed there is no need to test on animals or humans.”

The mini-livers could potentially be used like dialysis machines, buying time for a patient’s liver to repair itself or for doctors to find a replacement liver, according to the researchers.

Professor Ian Gilmore, a liver specialist at the Royal Liverpool Hospital in northwest England, said that the Newcastle team had made a “big ethical leap forward” in not requiring embryos to produce tissue.

“It is exciting because there is a real dearth of treatments available for people with liver disease,” he said.