Constructing biomimetic liver models through biomaterials and vasculature engineering

Weikang Lv; Hongzhao Zhou; Abdellah Aazmi; Mengfei Yu; Xiaobin Xu; Huayong Yang; Yan Yan Shery Huang; Liang Ma

doi:10.1093/rb/rbac079

Constructing biomimetic liver models through biomaterials and vasculature engineering

Regen Biomater. 2022 Oct 12:9:rbac079. doi: 10.1093/rb/rbac079. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Weikang Lv^{1

2}, Hongzhao Zhou^{1

2}, Abdellah Aazmi^{1

2}, Mengfei Yu³, Xiaobin Xu⁴, Huayong Yang^{1

2}, Yan Yan Shery Huang⁵, Liang Ma^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechatronic Systems, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China.
² School of Mechanical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China.
³ The Affiliated Stomatologic Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310003, China.
⁴ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 201804, China.
⁵ Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1PZ, UK.

Abstract

The occurrence of various liver diseases can lead to organ failure of the liver, which is one of the leading causes of mortality worldwide. Liver tissue engineering see the potential for replacing liver transplantation and drug toxicity studies facing donor shortages. The basic elements in liver tissue engineering are cells and biomaterials. Both mature hepatocytes and differentiated stem cells can be used as the main source of cells to construct spheroids and organoids, achieving improved cell function. To mimic the extracellular matrix (ECM) environment, biomaterials need to be biocompatible and bioactive, which also help support cell proliferation and differentiation and allow ECM deposition and vascularized structures formation. In addition, advanced manufacturing approaches are required to construct the extracellular microenvironment, and it has been proved that the structured three-dimensional culture system can help to improve the activity of hepatocytes and the characterization of specific proteins. In summary, we review biomaterials for liver tissue engineering, including natural hydrogels and synthetic polymers, and advanced processing techniques for building vascularized microenvironments, including bioassembly, bioprinting and microfluidic methods. We then summarize the application fields including transplant and regeneration, disease models and drug cytotoxicity analysis. In the end, we put the challenges and prospects of vascularized liver tissue engineering.

Keywords: biomaterials; extracellular matrix; liver; vasculature engineering.

Publication types

Review