MedNexus
2021年 · 第101卷第40期
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Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) will be the leading cause of liver transplantation in the United States and is associated with increased mortality from SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia. There is currently no FDA-approved drug available to slow down the pathological progression of NASH, and since animal models cannot fully reproduce the pathology of human NASH, a novel experimental method that can bridge the current gap in human cognition of NASH pathology is yet to be developed. In this study, stem cells were isolated from irreversibly damaged livers of end-stage NASH patients, which proliferated, underwent hepatic differentiation and exhibited extensive ductal organoid characteristics. Transcriptomic analysis of liver organoids from NASH patients revealed significant upregulation of both pro-inflammatory cytokines and cytochrome P450-related pathways and known markers of liver fibrosis and tumor, to a patient-specific degree. Functionally, NASH liver organoids exhibit decreased passaging and growth capacity and distinctive features of NASH liver, including decreased albumin production, increased lipid accumulation induced by free fatty acids, increased sensitivity to apoptotic stimulation, and enhanced cytochrome P450 metabolism. Following liver differentiation, the ability of NASH liver organoids to dedifferentiate back to the bile duct state is reduced, which is consistent with the known decrease in NASH liver regeneration capacity. The present study also found that NASH liver organoids are more susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 or vesicular stomatitis virus challenge, accompanied by upregulation of ubiquitin D expression. The results of this study suggest that extracting stem cells directly from the irreversibly damaged liver of NASH patients and culturing liver organoids opens up new experimental pathways for personalized disease modeling and drug development, and may contribute to the study of slowing down NASH disease progression and counteracting NASH-related SARS-CoV-2 effects.
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