New research highlights how liver cells regenerate missing or damaged plumbing by becoming a new cell type. Here’s what Stacey Huppert of Cincinnati Children’s told me about the work, published in Nature.
What did you discover about how livers repair themselves?
We wanted to understand whether the bile ducts, or the plumbing of the liver, could be rebuilt from other cell types. We generated a model that lacked the plumbing system inside the liver. And, to our surprise, the animal rebuilt the plumbing system with the help of hepatocytes. They were not only able to do their jobs, but they were also able to become a different cell type, cholangiocytes.
How can that finding be used?
We now know that there’s one molecular pathway that’s important in building the bile ducts, but that there’s another pathway, at least in these adult cells, that can compensate if that one doesn’t work. That gives us another target to go after. That could potentially be with a genetic therapy or hepatocyte transplantation.