The role of TNF and its receptor family in liver progenitor cell proliferation and differentiation

维持肝功能对健康至关重要，损害肝功能最终会导致死亡。肝脏是不寻常的，因为它可以再生以替换丢失或受损的组织。最近已经确定肝脏再生有两种途径。一种涉及肝细胞，通常与急性肝损伤有关。另一种涉及肝祖细胞；这通常发生在慢性严重肝损伤，尤其是肝细胞增殖受损的情况下。本研究旨在了解肝祖细胞再生的潜在机制。这方面的知识可以导致策略，以增加卵形细胞对肝再生的贡献，在慢性肝损伤的情况下，提高患者的存活率。它可以应用于培养和维持肝干细胞的策略，以达到细胞和基因治疗纠正肝功能障碍的目的。由于卵形细胞与肝癌的关系，确定影响卵形细胞的因素并了解其作用机制也是必要的。椭圆形细胞具有双重人格特征，了解是什么导致它们走向肝脏分化和再生，以及是什么导致它们产生肝癌是很重要的。

Maintaining liver function is essential for health, and compromising this ultimately results in death. The liver is unusual, as it can regenerate to replace lost or damaged tissue. Recently it has been established that there are two pathways to liver regeneration. One involves hepatocytes, and this is normally associated with acute liver damage. The other, involves liver progenitor cells; and this is usually observed when there is chronic and severe liver damage, particularly when the proliferation of hepatocytes is impaired. This study seeks to understand the underlying mechanisms which recruit liver progenitor cells for regeneration. This knowledge can lead to strategies to augment the oval cell contribution to liver regeneration in cases of chronic liver damage, to enhance survival of the patient. It can be applied to strategies to grow and maintain liver stem cells in culture for the purpose of cell and gene therapy to correct liver dysfunction. It is also necessary to identify factors which affect oval cells and understand their mechanism of action because of their link to liver cancer. Oval cells have a Jekyll and Hyde characteristic, and it is important to know what leads them towards liver differentiation and regeneration, and what makes them produce liver cancers.