Preparation of Functional Human Hepatocytes Ex Vivo

Hepatocytes are liver parenchymal cells involved in performing various metabolic reactions. During the development of therapeutic drugs, toxicological assays are conducted using hepatocyte cultures before clinical trials. However, since primary hepatocytes cannot proliferate and rapidly lose their functions in vitro, many efforts have been put into modifying culture conditions to expand primary hepatocytes and induce hepatocyte functions in intrinsic and extrinsic stem/progenitor cells. In this chapter, we summarize recent advances in preparing hepatocyte cultures and induction of hepatocytes from various cellular sources.