Application of stem cells in the precise diagnosis and treatment of liver diseases

Liver diseases caused by diverse inflammation or cancer have serious damaged people's physical and mental health and become a heavy social burden. Stem cells possess unique properties of self-renewal and multi-directional differentiation, which are widely used for disease remodeling and regenerative medicine. Of them, human induced pluripotent stem cell-based liver organoids with self-organization of sinusoidal vessels have been reported for diverse liver cancer remodeling and drug sensitivity test, which provide unique platforms to dissect functional consequences of diverse levels of heteroplasmy of target gene mutation in liver cancers. Meanwhile, mesenchymal stem/stromal cells have been adopted for clinical treatment research on various liver diseases, including acute liver injury, decompensated liver cirrhosis, hepatic fibrosis and acute-on-chronic liver failure. In this review article, we mainly focus on the state-of-the-art literatures upon stem cell-based disease modeling and cell therapy for multifarious liver diseases from the view of basic research and clinical progress, which will provide references for the development of stem cell-based regenerative medicine in the precise diagnosis and treatment of liver diseases.