Yagi Hiroshi, Tafaleng Edgar, Nagaya Masaki, Hansel Marc C, Strom Stephen C, Fox Ira J, Soto-Gutierrez Alejandro
Department of Surgery, Keio University School of Medicine, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
Crit Rev Biomed Eng. 2009;37(4-5):377-98. doi: 10.1615/critrevbiomedeng.v37.i4-5.40.
Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells are human somatic cells that have been reprogrammed to a pluripotent state. Through several elegant technologies, we are now able to generate human iPS cells with disease genotypes that could serve as invaluable tools for human disease modeling. This could lead to an understanding of the root causes of a disease and to the development of effective prophylactic and therapeutic strategies for it. However, we are still far from generating fully functional liver cells from stem cells, including iPS cells, on in vitro culture systems. Tissue-engineering techniques have opened the window to inducing a functional fate for differentiated cells by providing a microenvironment that allows the maintenance of signals similar to those found in the natural microenvironment. Here we review the current technology to establish iPS cells and discuss strategies to generate human liver disease modeling using iPS cell technology in concert with bioengineering approaches.
诱导多能干细胞（iPS细胞）是已被重编程至多能状态的人类体细胞。通过几种精妙的技术，我们现在能够生成具有疾病基因型的人类iPS细胞，这些细胞可作为人类疾病建模的宝贵工具。这可能有助于理解疾病的根本原因，并开发出有效的预防和治疗策略。然而，在体外培养系统中，我们距离从包括iPS细胞在内的干细胞生成完全功能性的肝细胞仍有很大差距。组织工程技术通过提供一个允许维持与自然微环境中相似信号的微环境，为诱导分化细胞的功能命运打开了一扇窗。在此，我们综述了建立iPS细胞的当前技术，并讨论了结合生物工程方法使用iPS细胞技术生成人类肝脏疾病模型的策略。
