Technological key points for hepatocyte transplantation

Abstract

With the aim of hepatocyte transplantation for the patients with hyperammonemia due to congenital metabolic disorder, cell banking is in progress. In the course of cell processing, there are a number of problems that may be solved by technological approach. Isolated hepatocytes suffer from various stress such as ischemia, shear stress, damage by cryopreservation, temperature change, etc. Among them, shear stress is the most important but remains to be investigated yet. This issue must be studied by medical and technological cooperation. In this study, simple micro channel experiments and simple shear stress experiments were employed to investigate the effect of the physical stress on the cell viability. As a result, relative life hepatocytes difference to indicate the life hepatocytes death in micro-channel is 21.7±9.4 % under the bottom dominant cell distribution condition.