Advances in liver organoids: model systems for liver disease

Abstract

Reliable in vitro models with human-derived cells that recapitulate in vivo-like physiologies are required for drug discovery and development to reduce the gap between the results of cell-based drug testing, animal testing, and human clinical trials. Liver organoid models have emerged as novel tools for hepatotoxicity evaluation, liver disease modeling, and drug screening. Liver organoids can be generated from biopsies of liver tissues or pluripotent stem cells and can be applied to various liver diseases, including metabolic associated fatty liver disease, infectious liver disease, genetic liver disease, and liver cancer. This review focuses on recent studies on organoids to model human liver diseases and discusses the advantages and limitations of current liver organoids for translational applications.