Biomaterials in Liver Tissue Engineering

Orthotopic liver transplant is an effective treatment for many liver diseases, however there exists an extreme shortage of suitable donated livers and approximately 30,000 deaths are attributed to diseases of the liver annually in the United States. A number of alternative treatment approaches have been developed in attempts to address donor shortage, but none have been as successful as liver transplant. Developments in the field of tissue engineering may potentially make possible a new therapy in which isolated hepatocytes are transplanted within three-dimensional polymer scaffolds to supplement or replace the function of a failing liver.