Production of Functional Hepatobiliary Organoids from Human Pluripotent Stem Cells

The research on human hepatobiliary development and disorders has been constrained by minimal access to human fetal tissue, and low accuracy of animal models. To overcome this problem, we have established a system for the differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) into functional hepatobiliary organoids (HBOs). We have previously reported that our 45-d approach closely mimics key stages of hepatobiliary development, starting with the differentiation of hiPSC into endoderm and a small part of mesoderm, and subsequently into hepatoblast-like cells, followed by the parallel generation of hepatocyte-like cells and cholangiocyte-like cells, formation of immature HBO expressing early hepatic and biliary markers, and mature HBO displaying hepatobiliary functionality. In this study, we present an updated version of our previous protocol, which only needs 35 days to achieve maturation in vitro. Furthermore, a hepatobiliary culture medium is developed to functionally maintain the HBOs for more than 1.5 months. The capacity of this approach for producing large amounts of functional HBOs and enabling long-term culture in vitro holds promise for applications on developmental research, disease modeling, as well as screening of therapeutic agents.