How to grow a human liver in a dish June 22, 2012 | Source:
Nature News Japanese scientists have used induced stem cells to
create a liver-like tissue in a dish. The achievement could have
big clinical implications — a significant advance in the ability
to coax stem cells to self-organize into organs. The work was
presented by Yokohama City University stem-cell biologist
Takanori Takebe at the annual meeting of the International
Society for Stem Cell Research in Yokohama. “It blew my mind,”
said George Daley, director of the stem-cell transplantation
programme at the Boston Children’s Hospital in Massachusetts,
who chaired the session. “It sounds like a genuine advance,”
says Stuart Forbes, who studies liver regeneration at the
University of Edinburgh, UK. Forbes, who also works as a
consultant for Scotland’s liver-transplantation unit, says that
the advance could one day help to avoid the “bleak outcome”
currently experienced by the many patients who don’t survive
long enough to get a new liver. How he did i