Guest Editor(s)
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- Santosh Gupta, PhD
Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Fellow
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.
Scientia (Marie Curie) Post-doctoral Fellow, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
E-mail
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- Rama Shanker Verma, PhD, FNAsc, FBRS, FAMI, FASB, FABsc
- Stem Cell and Molecular Biology Laboratory, Department of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.
Website | E-mail
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- Akriti Sharma, PhD
- Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India Medical Device Regulatory Affairs, Tata Elxsi, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.
E-mail
Special Issue Introduction
Liver related disease is one of the leading causes of death worldwide affecting more than 650 million people. Liver disease accounts for 2 million deaths yearly and the trends is increasing steadily. Liver failure alone affects 1-2 million people worldwide. Most common cause of liver failure includes viral hepatitis, alcohol consumption, fatty liver disease, drug induced livery injury, inflammatory liver disease leading to fibrosis.
Liver is the largest organ in humans, performing around 500 functions encompassing metabolic, exocrine and endocrine functions. Hepatocytes being the primary parenchymal cell performing major metabolic function of the liver. Liver has the capacity to restore to the original liver mass after two third partial hepatectomy in rodents. Regenerative process induces hepatocytes proliferation and growth, as it is the primary parenchymal and functional cell performing majority of the function of liver.
Although there are pharmacological drugs which are used for reducing certain complications related to liver injury but not regeneration of moderate to extensively damaged liver. Its only due to the ability of the regeneration of liver, modern therapeutic intervention requires regenerative medicines linking either drugs that can induce regeneration of liver or stem cell-based therapy that can help in the regeneration and compensate liver damage.
In this regard, a number of progenitor and stem cells have been explored for the treatment of liver injury and regeneration. Stem cell due to their unique ability to self-renew and plasticity, plays important role in the physiological homeostasis of cellular turnover in normal regeneration and induced regeneration due to injury. Several stem cells have been used for preclinical and clinical studies for liver regeneration. These includes resident hepatic stem cells like oval cells, stellate cells, foetal liver cells and extrahepatic stem cells like embryonic stem cells, induced pluripotent stem cells adult stem cells from bone marrow, umbilical cord, adipose tissue and cord blood.
Derivation strategies of hepatocytes like cells from stem cells have been explored encompassing various strategies like usage of cocktail of growth factors, use of small molecules along with growth factors, microRNA, biomaterials. Apart from using cell therapy modules, regenerative factors like exosomes from adult stem cells like MSC have been shown to induced hepatic regeneration in preclinical and clinical studies.
This special issue therefore focuses on all the aspect of stem cell based therapeutic strategies targeting liver regeneration in preclinical and clinical studies. It includes stem cells, stem cells derived factors, advanced fabrication technology (3D bioprinting) based studies in liver regeneration and engineering applications.
We cordially invite all investigators, scientists, and clinicians who work in these fields to submit their articles (i.e., original research papers, review articles, commentaries, and editorials) for publication in this special issue of Hepatoma Research.
Topics
1. Pluripotent stem cells (iPSC and ESC) in Liver regeneration and tissue engineering
2. Mesenchymal Stem cells for liver regeneration
3. Mesenchymal Stem cells in liver tissue engineering
4. Stem cells derived exosomes in liver regeneration
5. Stem cells vectorized with biomaterials for liver regeneration
6. Biomaterials for liver regeneration
7. 3D bioprinting in liver regeneration
8. 3D bio printed liver model for disease modelling
9. Intrahepatic stem cells in liver regeneration
10. Animal models of liver regeneration for stem cell therapy
11. In vivo delivery of stem cells for liver regeneration
12. Ex vivo modelling of liver regeneration using stem cells and organoids
13. Stem cell derived micro-physiological systems for liver regeneration and engineering
14. Basic, translational, or clinical studies of liver regeneration with emphasis on stem cells
Submission Deadline
30 Jul 2022