Customized Liver Organoids As an Advanced Modeling and Drug Discovery Platform for Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Diseases

Overview

Journal Int J Biol Sci

Specialty Biology

Date 2023 Jul 27

PMID 37497008

Authors

Dong Wook Han

KangHe Xu

Zhe-Long Jin

Yong-Nan Xu

Ying-Hua Li

Lin Wang

Qilong Cao

Kee-Pyo Kim

Donghee Ryu

Kwonho Hong

Nam-Hyung Kim

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and its progressive form non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) have presented a major and common health concern worldwide due to their increasing prevalence and progressive development of severe pathological conditions such as cirrhosis and liver cancer. Although a large number of drug candidates for the treatment of NASH have entered clinical trial testing, all have not been released to market due to their limited efficacy, and there remains no approved treatment for NASH available to this day. Recently, organoid technology that produces 3D multicellular aggregates with a liver tissue-like cytoarchitecture and improved functionality has been suggested as a novel platform for modeling the human-specific complex pathophysiology of NAFLD and NASH. In this review, we describe the cellular crosstalk between each cellular compartment in the liver during the pathogenesis of NAFLD and NASH. We also summarize the current state of liver organoid technology, describing the cellular diversity that could be recapitulated in liver organoids and proposing a future direction for liver organoid technology as an platform for disease modeling and drug discovery for NAFLD and NASH.

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