Impact of Three-Dimentional Culture Systems on Hepatic Differentiation of Puripotent Stem Cells and Beyond

Abstract

Generation of functional hepatocytes from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) is a vital tool to produce large amounts of human hepatocytes, which hold a great promise for biomedical and regenerative medicine applications. Despite a tremendous progress in developing the differentiation protocols recapitulating the developmental signalling and stages, these resulting hepatocytes from hPSCs yet achieve maturation and functionality comparable to those primary hepatocytes. The absence of 3D milieu in the culture and differentiation of these hepatocytes may account for this, at least partly, thus developing an optimal 3D culture could be a step forward to achieve this aim. Hence, review focuses on current development of 3D culture systems for hepatic differentiation and maturation and the future perspectives of its application.