"The stem cells were unable to self-renew, which resulted in long-term and irreversible impairment of tumour growth. In other words, the cancer was permanently shut down."
Collaboration uses stem cell technology to further personalized medicine September 8, 2015
Although bile duct disorders are well-recognized causes of liver disease, little is known about how these diseases develop. An ability to study the diseases in a Petri dish would allow a deeper understanding of the specific cell mechanisms that go awry, leading to a more targeted approach in developing and testing treatments for these diseases.
The findings from the study, entitled “Directed differentiation of cholangiocytes from human pluripotent stem cells,” were recently published in the August 2015 issue of the journal
“Until now, we have not had a good scientific model to study the human liver’s bile duct system,” explains Dr. Anand Ghanekar, a clinician-scientist at Toronto General Research Institute and one of the senior authors. “We need to be able to study a patient’s disease in a dish at the basic cellular and molecular level. Stem ce