Treatment of liver disease using placental stem cells: Feasibility of placental stem cells in liver diseases: Potential implication of new cell therapy-based strategies for hepatic diseases

Abstract

Translational studies have explored the therapeutic effects of stem cells, raising hopes for the treatment of numerous diseases. Liver diseases are the most common medical diagnoses worldwide and millions of people suffer from difficult-to-treat liver diseases. Currently, orthotopic liver transplantation is the only effective treatment of end-stage hepatic disease, but this procedure is associated with many problems, including the donor scarcity, operative damage, high cost, risk of immune rejection, and the lifelong immunosuppressive treatments. Therefore, the development of therapies is required and currently under investigation all over the world. Use of cell therapy is increasing for the treatment of damaged tissue or organ regeneration. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), an adult stem cell population, have characteristics of self-renewal, multipotency, and immunomodulation without ethical problem and risk for teratoma formation. Placenta-derived stem cells (PDSCs), which have received much research attention, display multi-lineage differentiation potential, and they are free of ethical concerns, easily accessible, abundant, and strongly immunosuppressive. There are several types of PDSCs. In this chapter, we will explain the characterization of several kinds of PDSCs and discuss recent investigations that study the therapeutic potential of PDSCs in repair of injured liver with a view to its utility in regenerative medicine. Although there remain many problems we should solve, many results suggest that human stem cells therapy including PDSCs is one of the new promising technologies for intractable human liver damage/diseases.