Sino-Singapore Online, July 9th (Reporter Chen Jing) Renji Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine disclosed on the 9th that Yan Hexin, Zhai Bo, and Yu Weifeng’s team of the hospital have innovatively designed a new bioartificial liver support system, significantly Improve the performance of bioartificial liver.
Gas-liquid interactive bioartificial liver (Ali-BAL) support system The new bioartificial liver support system (Ali-BAL) breaks through the key technical bottlenecks of bioartificial liver or provides new treatment methods and solutions for patients with liver failure.
Chinese experts and others published research papers in the top international translational medical journal "Science Translational Medicine", which explained the basic working principle of the bioartificial liver technology, and the results of the safety and effectiveness of the technology used in experimental animals.
The innovative gas-liquid interactive bioartificial liver support system designed by the innovative combination of the research team has greatly improved the performance of bioartificial liver. Photo courtesy of Renji Hospital
China has a large number of patients with liver disease, and many patients develop liver failure every year. Liver transplantation is currently the most effective treatment, but liver donation is far from meeting the needs of liver transplantation.
According to the research team, the bioartificial liver (BAL) provides an alternative method that can replace the work of the liver in a short time and promote the regeneration and repair of the damaged liver. For patients with severe liver failure waiting for liver transplantation, bioartificial liver can help maintain life until liver transplantation is successful.
It is reported that liver cells and reactors are the two core elements of BAL. At present, the sources of hepatocytes used in BAL are primary hepatocytes and porcine primary hepatocytes, etc., but there are problems such as shortage of sources, heterologous viruses, tumorigenicity risk, and high cost; common bioreactors have limited exchange area in application, Oxygen and nutrient exchange efficiency is low, which greatly reduces the efficiency of liver cell material exchange and detoxification.
Yanhe's new team has established a brand-new, continuously expanding functional human hepatocyte cell line, which not only solves the bottleneck problem that primary hepatocytes cannot be expanded in vitro for a long time, but also has many functions such as protein synthesis that are more significant than traditional artificial hepatocytes. improve. The innovative gas-liquid interactive bioreactor designed by the team improves the efficiency of nutrient and oxygen exchange, ensures the rapid expansion of cells, and further improves the synthesis and detoxification functions of liver cells.
Therefore, the innovative gas-liquid interactive bioartificial liver support system (Ali-BAL) designed by the innovative combination of the research team has greatly improved the performance of bioartificial liver.
Animal experiments have shown that pigs with liver failure survived after 3 hours of treatment with the Ali-BAL system; pathological results show that Ali-BAL can promote liver regeneration and liver function recovery.
The team revealed that they are very confident about the upcoming "Clinical Research on Ali-BAL System in Patients with Liver Failure"; -The BAL system will provide safer, more economical and more effective treatments for liver failure patients besides liver transplantation.