Therapeutic Potential of Bone Marrow-Derived Stem Cells in Treatment of Genetic Diseases of the Liver

Genetic liver diseases are the greatest challenge of modern health care that have no proven treatment. End-stage patients are advised for transplantation of liver. Unlike kidney, donor liver is difficult to obtain. Therefore, an alternate route of generating hepatocytes has been sought. BM-derived stem cells have been shown to differentiate into hepatocytes in culture and in vivo. It has been proposed that small increase in missing protein may cause significant improvement in the pathology of genetic liver diseases. Experimental findings from our and other groups heighten the scope for exploitation of this novel phenomenon of adult stem cells plasticity for the treatment of such disease. It has been presumed that BM-stem cell therapy not only helps for the synthesis of missing protein, it may protect liver from hepatocellular carcinoma or other adverse pathological changes of the liver.