Replacing liver cells
Archived article from Oct 23, 1998
By Amy Vames
For people with severe liver disease, the prognosis is grim.
"Thirty thousand Americans die each year from liver dysfunction," said Prabhas Moghe, assistant professor of chemical and biochemical engineering. "The only current therapy to treat end-stage liver failure is organ transplant. But there are huge costs associated with that, as well as a scarcity of available organs."
Moghe, who is also a faculty member of the New Jersey Center for Biomaterials and Medical Devices, envisions a day when organ transplants are no longer necessary. To that end, he's working to replace damaged liver cells with healthy tissue grown on a polymer scaffold or "sponge" implanted in the patient's body.
To succeed, Moghe, a recent recipient of a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Award, must first find a way to grow replacement tissue that is structurally similar to the body's own liver cells. Last year, his team became the first to use confocal microscopy to view both synthetic polymer scaffolds and cells growing within them.
A confocal microscope optically sections the sponges into two- and three-dimensional images, yielding detailed "topographical" maps of the replacement tissue growing in the pores of the scaffolds, Moghe explained. The microscope, purchased in 1996 with funds from the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology, is a shared facility of the New Jersey Center for Biomaterials and Medical Devices that is available to both academic and industrial researchers.
"The surface topography on these artificial tissue sponges is not smooth; it is very tortuous," Moghe said, noting that these irregularities may hinder the migration and growth of liver cells on the sponges. He hopes that by altering the microarchitecture of the sponge's surface, he can get the cells to organize and function the way they naturally would in the body.
Like the tissue Joachim Kohn is developing, Moghe's artificial tissue base is also degradable, meaning that once healthy cells have filled in the pores of the implanted sponge, the artificial scaffold would dissolve harmlessly in the body. Moghe plans to begin animal experiments using the artificial sponges in another year or so.
His work is getting support from several sources. This spring he received an Integra Young Faculty Excellence Award from Integra LifeSciences Corp. In addition, he has received a Merck Exploratory Research Award, and a Johnson & Johnson Discovery Award is funding a related study on how to induce liver-cell movement.
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