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Updated: Oct 7, 2025

Defined and Scalable Generation of Hepatocyte-like Cells from Human Pluripotent Stem Cells
Published on: March 2, 2017
Hepatocyte generation in liver homeostasis, repair, and regeneration
Wenjuan Pu1, Bin Zhou2,3,4
1State Key Laboratory of Cell Biology, Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Center for Excellence in Molecular Cell Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China.
Abstract:
The liver has remarkable capability to regenerate, employing mechanism to ensure the stable liver-to-bodyweight ratio for body homeostasis. The source of this regenerative capacity has received great attention over the past decade yet still remained controversial currently. Deciphering the sources for hepatocytes provides the basis for understanding tissue regeneration and repair, and also illustrates new potential therapeutic targets for treating liver diseases. In this review, we describe recent advances in genetic lineage tracing studies over liver stem cells, hepatocyte proliferation, and cell lineage conversions or cellular reprogramming. This review will also evaluate the technical strengths and limitations of methods used for studies on hepatocyte generation and cell fate plasticity in liver homeostasis, repair and regeneration.
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