According to the British “Daily Telegraph” reported on the 15th, U.S. researchers said they have been in the laboratory using mouse cells to artificially grow a liver, which marks a major step forward in “custom-made organs” technology, such as the technology is progressing smoothly, the next five years or will be used for human liver transplants. However, some scholars cautiously said that this technology still has many obstacles to overcome. The experiment was completed by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital, who first removed the cells from the rat’s liver, leaving a “scaffold” and then injected 200 million healthy liver cells into the scaffold for cultivation, successfully growing a living artificial rat liver capable of breaking down toxins. The artificial liver survived for 10 days in the petri dish with the artificial blood supply. The researchers also transplanted this artificial liver into rats, but did not remove the rats’ original livers, and the rats survived for several hours. Their article, published in Nature? Medicine, write that the process is a four-step process. First, the damaged liver is soaked in sterile water to remove the cells; second, the remaining collagen and blood vessels are used as a “scaffold”; third, stem cells prepared from skin cells are filled into the “scaffold”; and finally, the artificial liver is obtained. The team’s leader, Kurt Yogane of Harvard Medical School, said this is the first time a stem cell has been used in the laboratory. Yougon said, this is the first time in the laboratory to grow an artificial liver comparable to the real liver, the experimental results show that the artificial liver can be like the real liver to break down harmful toxic substances, can be used to repair the liver because of injury, disease, alcohol abuse and other damage. Since the artificial liver is made from the patient’s own cells, the patient’s immune system will not reject it after replacing the damaged liver. The technology is very similar to the “artificial trachea” transplant performed in Spain two years ago, where a multinational team of researchers completed the world’s first “artificial trachea” and complete “artificial organ” transplant in June 2008. “Five months after the surgery, the 30-year-old female patient had made a full recovery. The breakthrough for Yohoka’s team is that the liver is more complex and requires more effort to grow than the trachea. But only one type of liver cell was used in this experiment, and the artificial liver that was grown could only perform a fraction of normal liver function. Yougon also pointed out that this is only a conceptual experiment; to create a real implantable and fully functional and durable liver, there are still some difficulties to overcome, such as the need to “equip” the liver with cells that can kill bacteria and other invaders, and so on. The researchers also said that the technology now requires the use of donor organs, but that eventually, scientists could use pig livers or artificial “scaffolds” to obtain artificial livers without the need for donor organs. A spokesman for the British Liver Foundation also said the achievement is exciting, but there is still a long way to go to really help liver patients.