Background: No effective therapies have yet been established for liver regeneration in liver failure. Autologous skeletal myoblast cell sheet transplantation has been proven to improve cardiac function in patients with heart failure, and one of the mechanisms has been reported to be a paracrine effect by various growth factors associated with liver regeneration. Therefore, the present study focused on the effect of myoblast cells on liver regeneration in vitro and in vivo.
Methods: We assessed the effect of myoblast cells on the cells comprising the liver in vitro in association with liver regeneration. In addition, we examined in vivo effect of skeletal myoblast cell sheet transplantation in C57/BL/6 mouse models of liver failure, such as liver fibrosis induced by thioacetamide and hepatectomy.
Results: In vitro, the myoblast cells exhibited a capacity to promote the proliferation of hepatic epithelial cells and the angiogenesis of liver sinusoidal endothelial cells, and suppress the activation of hepatic stellate cells. In vivo, sheet transplantation significantly suppressed liver fibrosis in the induced liver fibrosis model and accelerated liver regeneration in the hepatectomy model.
Conclusions: Autologous skeletal myoblast cell sheet transplantation significantly improved the liver failure in the in vitro and in vivo models. Sheet transplantation is expected to have the potential to be a clinically therapeutic option for liver regeneration in liver failure.
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