Launch of LIV-ES, a European research project aiming at developing innovative therapies for liver-associated diseases
LIV-ES’ goal is to develop innovative conditions and standardized protocols to provide a renewable source of human hepatocytes (liver cells) for the treatment of liver diseases. The liver is a large organ (2% of the body mass in adult, 3% in children) that is essential for various body functions such as detoxification, protein synthesis, maintenance of metabolite and serum protein concentrations in the blood and the development of blood cells during pregnancy. As an organ with multiple functions, the liver is also associated with many types of diseases including metabolic disorders, acute failure, cholestatic diseases and cirrhosis. Liver transplantation is currently the only available, effective treatment for people with life-threatening metabolic disorders and acute liver failure. However, shortage of organ donors and long-term complications such as hypertension, diabetes or obesity represent major restrictions to widespread application of liver transplantation. There is therefore a clear need for viable alternatives such as cell-based therapies. Recent clinical trials involving adult hepatocyte transplantation have provided encouraging results but these approaches suffer important limitations due to the limited availability of human hepatocytes and the absence of an efficient protocol to expand them in vitro. LIV-ES will hence investigate the promise of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research to generate renewable cultures of human hepatocytes. Indeed, the embryonic origin of hES cells confers upon them two important properties: they are able to grow indefinitely in vitro while keeping their capacity to differentiate into all cell types including hepatocytes. However, the generation of fully functional human hepatocytes from hESC under clinically-compatible conditions remains a major challenge which LIV-ES partners are ready to overcome. The final goal of LIV-ES consortium is to deliver by the end of the three year project a bank of fully-mature human hepatocytes derived from existing hES cell lines developed by LIV-ES partners. “LIV-ES basic philosophy is to share the results of its research with scientific and industrial communities within Europe to further accelerate their use in pharmacotoxicology and the clinical translation to patients in need” says Anne Weber-Benarous. “Although clinical trials are beyond the scope of this project, we hope to be ready at the end of the three-year programme to evaluate the ES-derived hepatocytes in large animal models”. Partners: Anne Weber-Benarous, Georges Uzan (Inserm U972, France), Christiane Guguen-Guillouzo (Inserm U522, France), Roger Pedersen/Ludovic Vallier (Cambridge University, UK), Eithan Galun (Hadassah Medical Center, Israel), Deborah Burks (Centro de Investigacion Principe Felipe, Spain), Pascale Bouillé (VECTALYS a gene delivery platform providing viral recombinant vectors, France), Arto Urtti and Timo Otonkoski (Helsingin yliopisto, Finland), Christiane Dascher-Nadel (Inserm Transfert, France – Project Management).
Pays
Spain, Finland, France, Israel, United Kingdom