Niya Aleksieva reviews biliary-mediated hepatocyte regeneration in J Hepatol Editorial

Editorial by Tissue Repair student Niya Aleksieva reviews current knowledge about the role of biliary-derived hepatocytes in liver repair.

Niya’s Editorial in the Journal of Hepatology (April 2019) reviews the paper by Manco et al in J Hepatol 2019 (doi.org/10.1016/j.jhep.2019.02.003) and provides an excellent overview of the current knowledge about the role of biliary-derived hepatocytes in restoration of the liver parenchyma following chronic liver injury.

Niya studies the role of hepatocytes in liver injury and repair in the Forbes lab at the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine. She ends her editorial as follows:

‘The present study contributes significant extra information to the knowledge of biliary-mediated hepatocyte regeneration. Considering that the only definitive treatment option for patients with end-stage chronic liver disease is transplantation and demand for donor organs far outweighs availability, describing the endogenous regenerative mechanism including biliary-mediated regeneration is important. It may be that if we can understand the molecular pathways governing the replication failure of hepatocytes and biliary-to-hepatocyte differentiation we can target these for clinical benefit. However, for this to be realised clinically, a rigorous understanding of the pathways concerned is required to guarantee safety of such approaches’.

Aleksieva N and Forbes SJ. ‘Biliary-derived hepatocytes in chronic liver injury: Bringing new troops to the battlefield’.  J.Hepatol 2019