Regenerative medicine and liver injury: what role for bone marrow derived stem cells?

In recent years, great interest has been aroused by the discovery of the ability of adult stem cells to contribute to regeneration processes and repair of damaged tissues. In particular, bone marrow derived stem cells (BMSCs), the most well known population of multipotent stem cells in adults, have been shown to be able to generate many different committed cellular types. In this review, we systematically organize the numerous hypotheses emerging from the most recent studies, in animal and humans, which evaluated the potentiality of BMSCs to contribute to tissue repair in different types of liver damage. Our aim is to give scientists and clinicians who are interested in regenerative medicine the rational basis for planning future studies on stem cell therapy for liver diseases.