Hepatocyte transplantation - from the beginning to clinical application

Within the past 30 years hepatocyte transplantation has been developed in rodents for the cure of acute and chronic liver failure. Organ shortage and the enormous costs of orthotopic liver transplantation have promoted intensive research in transplantation of isolated hepatocytes. Transplanted syngeneic hepatocytes survive indefinitively in rodents, allowing correction of various inherited liver enzyme defects or enhancing recipient survival in experimentally induced acute liver failure. The clinical application of hepatocyte transplantation has been recently demonstrated in a young patient suffering from Crigler-Najjar syndrome type I, with successful long-term survival of allogeneic hepatocytes. This review reports the historical development and the published data on experimental and clinical hepatocyte transplantation.