Does anyone know if they could use the patient’s own liver cells instead of a donor’s? Is every cell in the dying liver so unhealthy that they couldn’t harvest any?
I guess if there is a genetic problem with the patients own liver, then it would make sense to use another persons cells.
Ahh just read the last paragraph:
> If the liver trial is successful, Gouon-Evans says, it would be worth investigating whether a person’s own stem cells could be used to generate the cells that seed the lymph nodes. This technique could create personalized cells that capture the diversity of cells in the liver and don’t require immunosuppressive drugs, she says.
edit: I guess maybe if you start with a healthy liver, the variable of whether the liver disease in question could affect the viability of transplanted cells is taken out of question? Presumably the immune response/immunosuppressant stuff is better characterized.
I have no idea why not, but my wife does a lot of work growing different cell types from stem cells, and my understanding is that that’s still like.. they think they are making cell types a, b or c, but it’s a lot of uncertainty. What they really do is convert the stem cells into cells that express m various markers/pass various tests that the “real” cell type also express.. but it’s really hard to know that it’s actually a 1-1 match.
Just yesterday she was lamenting they were making astrocyte cells, and many of the cells in the colony instead became.. something else, unclear what, maybe not even a cell type that exists in humans normally?
Either way: using healthy liver cells from a healthy liver would be a way to ensure you actually really have liver cells, and not something that just sorta duck-types as one