Evaluation of the performance of an hybrid artifical liver using three-dimensional culture of hepatocytes by hepatic failure small animals

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1. Last year, we could succeed in recovery of a light hepatic failure rat which induced by D-galactosamine, by our developed hybrid artificial liver support system using three dimensional culture of hepatocytes. This year, we tried to improve the artificial liver support system for recovery of a severer hepatic failure rat. Consequently, we could also succeed in the recovery of the severer hepatic failure rats (10% of the rats spontaneously died) by this support system (n=4). And a possibility of occuring of liver regeneration was found from the histochemical analysis of recovered rat liver.2. We tried to scale up the hybrid artificial liver support system for recovery of hepatic failure dogs. The volume of the artificial liver module for dog was about 300cm^3 which corresponded to about 100 times scaling up of the module (5cm^3) for rat. Dissolved oxygen concentration gradient occurred in the module seemed to be avoided by bi-directional flow of medium inside of the module. The performance which indicated by albumin secretion rate of hepatocytes immobilized in the module was comparable with static culture of hepatocytes. And we could get an knowledge about optimum flow rate of medium related to reveal the maximum performance of the hybrid artificial liver module.