Growing Human Liver Cells on Rodents

The human liver is like the chemistry lab of the body. The liver breaks down compounds and chemicals that enter the body, usually through the digestive system, and converts them into other compounds and chemicals.

But sometimes the new substances produced by the liver can be harmful to your health. For instance, you never really know how the liver will respond to a new drug until that drug is actually tested on genuine human liver cells.

Lab tests on animals haven't been reliable before now because they weren't "species specific." In other words, human liver cells and animal liver cells were different, so the compounds were broken down differently. And until now, genuine human liver cells have been hard to come by in a laboratory setting. Computer models have been unreliable in predicting results.

Enter "Mighty Mouse." Or, at least, a mouse that has been mighty helpful.

A genetic research team at Oregon Health & Science University's School of Medicine has announced that it has successfully bred mice that can actually produce human liver cells. It's a huge breakthrough, according to Markus Grompe, a geneticist who led the team.

Grompe adds that human liver cells produced in the mice can't be distinguished from normal liver cells produced in a human. The liver cells in the mice include the same proteins, human bile, and clotting factors.

Grompe says the breakthrough has the potential to change the way drugs are tested. He added that the mouse cells could be especially useful in finding new therapies to treat diseases like malaria and hepatitis C.

Scientists have tried for about ten years to determine whether mice could be genetically engineered and bred to grow human liver cells. Some results since 2004 have been promising, but there were still obstacles that hadn't been overcome.

Grompe's group found ways to overcome those obstacles. They expect to use their study to develop a commercial product for testing new pharmaceuticals more efficiently. The worldwide market for human liver cells, mainly among pharmaceutical companies, currently exceeds two billion dollars annually.

Officials at Oregon Health and Science University say they hope to secure a patent for the technology developed in the study.

Human liver cells had previously been harvested from transplanted livers and the livers of people who had recently died. But these liver cells were generally of a poorer quality than liver cells in a healthy human, and therefore results could be unreliable.

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