Biomedical Engineering Reference
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Fig. 12 Requirement for VEGFR2-Id1 pathway in liver SEC-mediated liver regeneration. Intra-
splenic transplantation of Id1
+/+
LSECs into the Id1
-/-
liver sinusoids restores hepatic-vascular
regeneration. Transplanted Id1
+/+
or Id1
-/-
Wnt2
+
HGF
+
GFP
+
LSECs localize to the vicinity of
hepatocytes, promoting inductive and proliferative angiogenesis thereby sustaining physiological
liver regeneration
and Id1-deficient mice, suggest that LSECs are responsible for establishing an
inductive vascular niche to initiate hepatic proliferation [
65
].
6 Discussion
Regenerative medicine promises to improve health by repairing or regenerating
cells, tissues or organs under different sets of circumstances including acute
chemical injury, inflammation, surgical resection, remodeling, and age-related
organ degeneration. Developmental biologists have tried to identify extrinsic and
intrinsic factors that may potentially act as master regulators of embryonic organ
formation. The biomechanical microenvironment also induces ingrowth and dif-
ferentiation of tissue. For instance, injectable polymer systems have been shown to
control the spatiotemporal dynamics of morphogens and in situ programming of
cells at sites of injury [
73
].
Regeneration is a natural process in which the body can restore and repair
damage to an existing cell, tissue, or organ. Scientists are interested in organ
regeneration due to the possible medical applications of further advances in this
field. The liver is one organ that naturally exhibits this ability, which even enables
it to regenerate itself after the majority of the organ has been removed. Given that
the liver already receives approximately 25 % of an organism's cardiac output,
one theory is that an increased blood flow to the liver recorded immediately after
PH leads to increased shear stress. Mechanotransduction, the conversion of
mechanical forces acting upon a cell into biochemical activity, activates the sig-
naling pathways leading to organ regeneration [
74
]. Further study of this dynamic
between liver blood flow and regeneration could lead to important advances in the
field of organ regeneration.
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