Transplanted Hepatic Stellate Cells participate in liver regeneration after partial hepatectomywithout risk of hepatic fibrosis

Abstract

Hepatic stellate cells are considered as one of the potentialstem cells candidates in the liver. The aim of our work was tostudy the probability of hepatic stellate cells transplantationto rats after partial hepatectomy, their further homing, theways of differentiation and hepatocytes repopulation in therecipient liver. For this reason fresh isolated rat`s hepaticstellate cells were transplanted into portal vein of intact rats(control group) and rats immediately after partial hepatectomy(experimental group). Before transplantation cells werelabeled by adenovirus expressing green fluorescent protein.Our results showed that it was possible to detect 2 types ofdonor cells in the recipient liver of control and experimentalgroups: 1) hepatocyte-like cells in liver parenchyma; 2) small,spindle-shaped, rounded and triangular cells in liver sinusoidsand portal areas. Transplantation after partial hepatectomyleads to significant increase of transplanted cells homing andstimulation of their differentiation into hepatocytes. Overthe whole experiment there was no hepatic stellate cellstransdifferentiation into myofibroblasts, thus there is no risk ofliver fibrosis development after this cell type transplantation.In summary hepatic stellate cells after being transplanted areable to differentiate into hepatocytes and do not induce liverfibrosis, that confirms their role in organ regeneration andprobable belonging to hepatic progenitor cells.

Keywords

hepatic stellate cells / partial hepatectomy / transplantation / regeneration / hepatocytes / myofibroblasts

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