[The liver].

Hepatocyte transplantation has not yet reached therapeutic status, as it has proven difficult to transplant a sufficient number of functional hepatocytes able to integrate and proliferate inside liver plates. It has recently been shown that whole livers can be decellularized by portal infusion of detergents, yielding a decellularized scaffold with a well preserved vascular network and specific liver matrix. Perfusion of different combinations of cells through the portal vein of these scaffolds results in reconstitution of a complete functional organ that can be transplanted in small animals. An auto-constructed human liver could be engineered from exogenous liver scaffolds seeded with various cell populations, including autologous cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells. Auto-constructed livers might replace conventional liver grafts in future.