The efficacy of CPDF therapy for maintaining liver function and renal function was not inferior to Pe plus CHDF therapy.
TACE can be regarded as current standard for the treatment of HCC-patients with irresectable, but localized multinodular HCC with maintained liver function (BCLC group B) where it yields overall survival rates in the range of 20 months [ 8, 10, 11].
The specific recognition between asialoglycoprotein receptor and galactose ligand at cell substrate interfaces has been shown to mediate hepatocyte adhesion and maintain liver specific functions of hepatocytes.
The development of more physiologic, organotypic hepatic culture systems that maintain liver structure and function over longer periods of time will also permit further understanding of complex mechanisms of hepatotoxicity, the identification of key stress pathways and development of more predictive computational models (Judson et al., 2010; Clewell et al., 2008; Houck and Kavlock, 2008).
During liver regeneration various liver cells including hepatocytes undergo cell division and proliferation to maintain liver mass, architecture and function.
Our results demonstrated that hepatocytes cultured in the bioreactor could re-establish cell polarity and maintain liver-specific functions (e.g. albumin and urea synthesis, phase I&II metabolism functions) for seven days.
Engineered primary hepatocytes, including co-cultured hepatocyte sheets, are an attractive to basic scientific and clinical researchers because they maintain liver-specific functions, have reconstructed cell polarity, and have high transplantation efficiency.
Our study was primarily focused on Notch1, however, it would be interesting to investigate if other Notch receptors have similar roles since they are reported to regulate SEC and HSC function to maintain liver home-ostasis [ 7].
Maintaining liver parenchymal function ex vivo is especially important as there is need for fully functional hepatocytes (Bissell et al. 1987) to generate stable systems for toxicology screenings (Clayton and Darnell 1983), to expand primary hepatocytes for transplantation into patients, (Tateno and Yoshizato 1996) or to establish bioartificial liver devices.
