A Japanese research team has become the first in the world to develop a functional liver from human induced pluripotent stem cells, according to an article the researchers published in the online version of British journal Nature.
The team created liver buds and transplanted these into mice suffering from liver failure. Their survival rate improved markedly after the transplants, said the team led by Yokohama City University Prof. Hideki Taniguchi.
No previous studies have successfully generating a three-dimensional functional organ from human pluripotent stem cells, such as iPS cells, which can develop into any tissue, according to the article.
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