It is necessary to develop highly functionalized liver cell culture systems for liver tissue engineering such as bioartificial livers and liver cell chips.
In critical care units, systems for liver supply are necessary to ensure main liver functions and to bridge patient to transplantation or potential regeneration.
On the other hand, growth factor/heparin-immobilized culture substrata and cell-embedded hydrogels in extracellular matrix-filled biocompatible macroporous scaffold culture systems for liver tissue engineering have been developed.
As conventional two-dimensional (2D) static culture conditions poorly recapitulate the in vivo cellular environment, we will discuss bioreactor systems for liver tissue engineering, both macro-scale and micro-scale culture systems.
Moreover, readout systems for liver insults are similar, and sometimes even identical, in humans and animals and include blood tests, biopsy and noninvasive imaging techniques.
New in vitro test systems for liver would improve screening of hepatic responses to these compounds and the understanding of the relationship of hepatic responses to organism-level toxicity.
