Science Paper Interpretation! For the first time, it has been revealed that bile tube organs can repair damaged human livers

The study paves the way for cell therapy for liver disease--- in other words, the cultivation of bile tube organs in the laboratory as an alternative component can be used to restore the patient's own liver health or repair the damaged donor liver so that they can still be transplanted.
bile tubes function as a waste disposal system for the liver, while bile tube inseconsislation causes one-third of adults and 70 per cent of children to need a liver transplant, with no other treatment.
current shortage of liver providers: the average waiting time for a liver transplant in the UK is 135 days for adults and 73 days for children, according to the NHS.
means that only a limited number of patients can benefit from this treatment.
urgent need to increase the supply of organs or provide alternatives to full organ transplantation.
cell-based therapy may provide an advantageous alternative.
, however, the development of these new therapies is often hampered and delayed by the lack of appropriate models to test their safety and ability in humans before clinical trials begin.
the new study, the researchers developed a new method that uses a recent "perfusion system" to maintain donated organs outside the body.
using this technique, they have confirmed for the first time that laboratory-cultured bile tube cells can be transplanted into damaged human livers for repair.
as a principled proof of their method, they repaired livers that were deemed unsuitable for transplantation due to bile tube damage.
this method may be available for a wide range of organs and diseases to accelerate the clinical application of cell therapy.
"Given the long-term shortage of donor organs, it is important to find ways to repair damaged organs and even provide alternatives to organ transplantation," said Dr. Fotios Sampaziotis of the Wellcome-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, co-author of the paper.
we've been using organoids to understand biology and disease or their ability to regenerate in small animals for years, but we've been hoping to use them to repair damaged human tissue.
our study shows for the first time in principle that this is possible.
" bile tube disease affects only some catheters and not others.
important because catheters that need to be repaired are often completely damaged in diseases, and bile tube cells can only be successfully collected in catheters that have never been affected.
Using single-cell RNA sequencing and organ culture techniques, the researchers found that although catheter cells are different, bile tube cells from the gallbladder (usually unaffected by disease) can be converted into bile tube cells (intra-liver catheters), which are usually destroyed in disease, and can be reversed by using an ingredient in bile called bile acid.
means that the patient's own cells from areas not affected by the disease can be used to repair damaged catheters.
to test this hypothesis, the researchers cultured gallbladder cells into organs in the lab.
is a group of cells that can grow and multiply during in vitro culture, and the three-dimensional structure it presents has the same organizational structure, function, gene expression and genetic function as the organ under study.
, they transplanted these gallbladder organs into mice and found that they did repair damaged catheters, opening the way for the use of regenerative medicine in diseases affecting the bile system.
the researchers used the technique, which is based on an perfusion system used by Addenbrooke's Hospital, on the livers of human patients.
they injected gallbladder organs into the human liver, and for the first time showed that implanted gallbladder organs repaired the catheters of the human liver and restored their function.
, the study confirms that their cell-based therapy can be used to repair damaged livers.
This is the first time we have been able to confirm that human livers can be enhanced or repaired using cells cultured in the lab," said Professor Ludovic Vallier of the Wellcome-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute, co-author of the paper.
further research is needed to test the safety and feasibility of this approach, but hopefully we can move it to clinical use in the next few years.
the researchers expect this method to be used to repair the patient's own liver, they believe it may also provide a potential way to repair the damaged patient's liver to make it suitable for transplantation.
an important step in allowing us to use organs that were previously considered unsuitable for transplantation," added Mr. Kourosh Saeb-Parsy, co-author of the paper and head of the Department of Surgery at the University of Cambridge.
in the future, this may help reduce the pressure on the transplant waiting list.
" Reference: 1.Fotios Sampaziotis et al. Cholangiocyte organoids can repair bile ducts after transplantation in the human liver. Science, 2021, doi:10.1126/science.aaz6964. 2.Simone N. T. Kurial et al. Emerging cell therapy for biliary diseases. Science, 2021, doi:10.1126/science.abg3179. 3.Lab-grown 'mini-bile ducts' used to repair human livers in regenerative medicine first