Assessment of the hepatocytic differentiation ability of human skin-derived ABCB5 stem cells.

The continuously decreasing willingness for liver donation aggravates treatment of end-stage liver diseases requiring organ transplantation as the only curative strategy. Cell therapy approaches using human hepatocytes or stem cell-derived hepatocyte-like cells may be a therapeutic option out of this dilemma. ABCB5-positive mesenchymal stromal cells from human skin featured promising potential to treat immune-mediated diseases. Since most of chronic liver diseases involve exaggerating immune mechanisms, it was the aim to demonstrate in this study, whether ABCB5 stem cells may serve as a resource to generate hepatocytic cells for application in liver cell transplantation. Using an established single-step protocol, which had been successfully applied to differentiate mesenchymal stromal cells into the hepatocytic lineage, ABCB5 skin-derived stem cells did not gain significant characteristics of hepatocytes. Yet, upon culture in hepatocytic differentiation medium, ABCB5 stem cells secreted immunomodulatory and anti-fibrotic factors as well as proteins, which may prompt hepatic morphogenesis besides others. Hepatic transplantation of ABCB5 stem cells, which had been prior cultured in hepatocytic differentiation medium, did not cause any obvious deterioration of liver architecture suggesting their safe application. Thus, human ABCB5 skin-derived stem cells secreted putative hepatotropic factors after culture in hepatocytic differentiation medium.