Skin cells to rescue ailing livers

Scientists have successfully generated the main kind of liver cell from a skin cell for the first time. Photo / Thinkstock

Scientists have been able to convert skin cells into liver cells, a breakthrough that could one day eliminate the need for organ transplants.

A study using mice at the Shanghai Institute for Biological Sciences successfully generated the main type of liver cell - called a hepatocyte - from a skin cell.

According to the study, published this week in Nature, "when transplanted into mouse models of liver injury, the hepatocyte-like cells can repopulate the livers and restore their function".

Australian liver expert Professor Geoff McCaughen said while stem cells have been seen to make the transition, this was the first time the "reprogramming" technique worked with skin cells.

"They're not perfectly functional like a normal liver cell, but they're probably 50 per cent or more there," said Prof McCaughen, head of the liver transplant unit at Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.

"The genes which are used in programming and making it (a) liver cell ... those genes have been put in to a skin cell and made functional," he explained.

The liver makes proteins, produces blood-clotting factors, metabolises glucose, gets rid of toxins and maintains blood sugar and energy levels.

"You can't live without these crucial liver cells, called hepatocytes, without them you die - this is liver failure," he told AAP.

Researchers would now need to test the function of the reprogrammed cells on a mouse that had been subjected to the cause of liver failure.

"The concept would be that they would be injected and then they would populate the liver and generate new liver function and improve liver function.

"That would be the holy grail - that they would stop the liver failing altogether, and the patient would not need a liver transplant or die."

About 200 people are on the waiting list for liver transplants in Australia, and 10 per cent of them would die while in line, Prof McCaughen said.

Chronic liver disease was linked mainly to alcohol, auto-immune diseases and Hepatitis B and C, he said.

- AAP