Hepatocyte transplantation for metabolic disorders, experience at King's College hospital and review of literature

Hepatocyte transplantation is emerging as a potential treatment for liver based metabolic disorders and acute liver failure. To date, clinical studies have shown that hepatocyte transplantation could be used as a "bridge" to liver transplantation in a few patients with acute liver failure and has changed the phenotype of meta- bolic patients in terms of reducing the severity of illness. For many years, research studies have been carried out to optimise condi- tions for a) hepatocyte isolation in order to obtain the highest pos- sible number of viable hepatocytes isolated from various sources of unused donor liver tissues, and b) cryopreservation and storage of hepatocytes for immediate cell availability in emergency cases. In this review, we summarise the worldwide clinical experience in hepatocyte transplantation for liver based metabolic disorders including the experience of our centre at King's College Hospital, London (United Kingdom). We briefly comment on the possible future developments and improvements needed in this field (Acta gastroenterol. belg., 2005, 68, 457-460).