Customized liver organoids as an advanced in vitro modeling and drug discovery platform for non-alcoholic fatty liver diseases

作者：Dong‐Wook Han, KangHe Xu, Zhe‐Long Jin, Yongnan Xu, Yinghua Li, Lin Wang, Qilong Cao, Kee-Pyo Kim, Dong Hee Ryu, Kwonho Hong, Hyung Nam Kim · 发表于：International Journal of Biological Sciences · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.7150/ijbs.85145 · 被引用次数：21 · 研究领域：Liver Disease Diagnosis and Treatment、Liver physiology and pathology、Pancreatic function and diabetes

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 in vitro platform for disease modeling and drug discovery for NAFLD and NASH.