Preparation of Functional Human Hepatocytes Ex Vivo

Hepatocytes are liver parenchymal cells involved in performing various metabolic reactions. During the development of therapeutic drugs, toxicological assays are conducted using hepatocyte culturesCultures before clinical trials. However, since primary hepatocytesPrimary hepatocytes cannot proliferate and rapidly lose their functions in vitro, many efforts have been put into modifying cultureCultures conditions to expand primary hepatocytesPrimary hepatocytes and induce hepatocyte functions in intrinsic and extrinsic stem/progenitor cells. In this chapter, we summarize recent advances in preparing hepatocyte culturesCultures and induction of hepatocytes from various cellular sources.