Adult skin stem cell-derived in vitro model for investigating acute liver failure

This method uses human skin-derived precursors (hSKP) differentiated towards hepatic cells (hSKP-HPC) as a hepatic in vitro model. Exposure of these cells for 24 hours to sub-cytotoxic concentrations of acetaminophen, which is a reference hepatotoxicant, induced specific cellular responses in a comparable way to primary human hepatocytes in culture. APAP-induced gene expression modulation (the read-out of this method) pointed towards an activation “liver damage”, “liver proliferation” and “liver necrosis” and “liver steatosis” were found to be significantly enriched in both in vitro models. This in vitro model, may be used as a surrogate of primary human hepatocytes for the screening of compounds that might potentially induce acute liver failure.