Science alert
Adult liver stem cells: bone marrow, blood, or liver derived?
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Another striking development has recently been made in the hepatic stem cell debate,1 with the publication of the two reports highlighted above. Since the appearance of papers demonstrating the potential of haematopoietic stem cells to "transdifferentiate" into liver epithelium in two different rodent bone marrow transplant models,2 3 several questions have been posed. For example, are all liver stem cells derived from a common haematopoietic precursor or are oval cells, now widely accepted as having bipotentiality1 (that is, the ability to differentiate into either hepatocytes or biliary epithelial cells (BEC)), present in the liver throughout development and into adulthood? Does this transdifferentiation process represent a pathophysiologically significant phenomenon and if so does it occur in humans? Does the effect depend on the degree of liver damage inflicted?
In both studies,4 5 two groups of patients were examined;
female bone marrow transplant (bmtx) recipients receiving male donor
cells and males transplanted with
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