Do you think the future of artificial liver research is headed toward cell-based efforts or dialysis-based efforts? Perhaps a combination of the two? Efforts like MARS and Prometheus are pioneering the dialysis approach to failing livers with their respective systems, but I feel like Vital Therapies ELAD system has more promise.
What are your opinions and do you think these two avenues of effort could work better if combined?
the main problem is the source of cells, years ago these devices where conceived to use porcine liver cells, but then the bioethical problem was if using pig tissues oppened a gate for problems with PERVs (porcine endogenous retroviruses).
Ohter issue is that liver cells cannot proliferate more than few population doublings in culture. An alternative to this, which was explored, was to use inmortal cells to expand the cultures, then reverse the inmortal phenotype by CRE-Lox recombinase excision. I published a paper on this technique many years ago
hope these comments will help
It does. I too looked into porcine cells and found that the problem with PERVs was a serious concern. What about the C3A cells currently in use by Vital Therapies for their ELAD device? They have been derived from hepatoblastoma lines and produce a large amount of albumin (helping with ascites-related complications).
http://vitaltherapies.com/elad/technology/
I suppose if the machine is being offered is because you solved ethical issues with use of cancer cell lines and had screen it for viruses and other issues. How many cells can you seed in the unit? how many cells will it be needed per patient?
Sorry, I don't work for Vital Therapies. I am looking for how many cells are placed in the cartridges, but what I do know is that currently their cartridges can work for approximately 10 days before being replaced.
Just wanted to draw your attention to this new project at the Wyss Translational Center Zurich about liver regeneration. It is about using a small healthy part of the liver, ex vivo growth and re transplantation of this regenerated part.
http://www.wysszurich.uzh.ch/projects/zurich-liver/id/12/action/show/ctrl/Page/
It does look interesting. Any word on the percentage needed for the explantation? I know that the minimum required portion for transplant is 33% (for the donor to survive after giving 67%). How much healthy liver is required for the system to operate?
I don't have info on that, but I would assume much less compared to the transplantation, as here the idea is to grow it ex vivo. Let's see how good they perform in the future!
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